


Fixing on the Hour

by TolkienGirl



Category: Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Angst, Brotherly Affection, Class Differences, Dysfunctional Family, Everyone but Colonel Fitzwilliam and like one other character are swapped, F/M, First Love, Gen, Genderbending, Humor, Korean-American Character, Lady Catherine is now a male chauvinist politician, Pride & Prejudice but it's in Upstate NY and NYC, References to Jane Austen, Rewrite, Romance, Slow Burn, Small Towns, The militia is now a traveling ballet, ballerinas, because you know...it's based on it, poetry references
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2020-09-19 05:14:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 30
Words: 99,728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20325682
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: *For a Limited Time Only* *Re-written*“I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.” In which Darcy Williams meets Eli Bennett, tries to be the best at everything, and maybe loses the chip on her shoulder.





	1. in which Netherfield Park is let at last

**Author's Note:**

> Hi All! I am re-editing AGAIN, and I wanted to share with you how this story has grown! I welcome your thoughts, dear readers. Thanks for sticking with me.
> 
> When I have completed this re-write and re-edit, I will remove the fic after a time to continue with the query process.

_“What are men to rocks and mountains?”_

_i._

_Compare_: cross-legged huddling in the grass, legal pad balancing on one knee, pencil ravaging the page with pin-prick tatters rather than words, _and_

—a gunshot, shattering glass.

Two sounds, and Eli sprang up to chase the first. Pad and pencil and book gone flying, the grass swallowing them.

The grass hadn’t swallowed _him_, though he’d asked it to.

He ran, knowing his way, and his way took him across the road, down one marsh-damp side of a ditch and up the other. There, he found Levi flat on his stomach in the hedgerow, pointing and shooting.

Eli might have been swatting at gnats and letting his ass go numb for the sake of atmosphere (that was supposed to matter to writers, _atmosphere_), but he liked to think he wasn’t an idiot.

_So_: of course, it was Levi.

Levi and guns were rarely parted in summertime. What else did the younger ones have to do? Saturday morning target practice was a natural progression from waving them around in the front yard. But without a visible target, the sound of glass remained a mystery.

Levi, scrambling to his feet, offered no explanation. “Shit! What are you doing here?”

James wasn’t around to remind Eli to count to ten. “What am _I _doing here, dickhead?” He peered through the lattice of the trees, down into the small valley, and put two and two together. How was that, for counting? “Are you shooting at the windows of that house?”

“It’s abandoned!” Levi protested.

Eli reached out to smack him and stopped himself at the last second. Levi flinched anyway. Very grimly, Eli said, “It’s not abandoned, it’s _vacant_. Neither of which is an excuse for vandalism.” In his mind he tacked _stupid_ on the end of each sentence, like they were still kids.

Levi kept out of reach and pouted. He scuffed the toe of one battered sneaker against the other. Sneakers, because it was summer. Nine months out of the year, Bennets wore boots.

Eli took the lack of argument as sufficient apology, for the present. He was still thinking of the flinch. “Let’s go home.” He picked up the rifle and started walking. Levi followed.

Through the trees, wheels grinding on gravel made them turn back around again. Moving vans—three of them—were crawling up the driveway that snaked through the clearing. High-end company, judging from the sleek make and gleaming paint. Whoever was moving into Levi’s abandoned mansion was not hard-up for cash.

Eli shut his eyes briefly. He hated feeling like a co-conspirator. “Run,” he growled, reaching for the gun, and they did.

Back across the road, Eli remembered, belatedly, that his book and notes were still swimming amid the overgrown weeds that skirted the edge of the Bennet land. More than the edge, if he was being honest. It had been a while since anyone had mowed. The weight of one more task pressed like a dull headache, just behind his eyes.

“You,” he said, jabbing a finger at Levi, “Go put this back.” He took some small satisfaction in slamming the rifle against Levi’s chest.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to look for my goddamn Yeats.”

“Yeats?”

Through his teeth, Eli said, “He’s a poet.”

Levi nodded. He was starting to grin a little again. It didn’t take much to embolden Levi. “Is this for your super-long paper?”

“My thesis? Yes.”

“Dad thinks it’s stupid.”

_Stupid. _Eli needed no reminder on that score. “Get your shit together. You’re still in trouble.”

Levi waited until he was several yards away and hollered out, “With who?” before hightailing it back to the house, the rifle clasped in his hands.

Eli waited, listening for a wayward shot, and mercifully, heard none.

He found the notes easily enough, but Yeats was elusive. Damn all bookmakers from the turn of the century or whenever, who bound books in drab gray-green. Eli decided that he’d been woefully misguided, pursuing higher education. If he was going to end up living at home and working minimum wage, anyway, why waste the money on an online master’s?

He didn’t have an answer for that question. 

“Eli?”

Eli sighed, hands on his knees in a defeated crouch. “I lost my book, OK? Duty called. Had to stop Jesse James in the making.”

James stepped into the weeds and started hunting around, like he knew what he was looking for. “What, exactly, was Levi doing?”

“Shooting at the windows at that place on Netherfield road. Of course, his timing is absolute shit, so we almost got intercepted by some rich assholes moving in.”

A beat. “How do you know they were assholes?” James asked.

Eli laughed despite himself. “Lucky guess. Can I just—be pissy, for a minute?”

“If you want.” James tapped him on the shoulder with a thin gray-green volume. “Here’s your book.”

Eli took it gratefully. “It’s been a long day.”

It was eleven in the morning. James did not mention this. He fell into step beside Eli as they made their way back to the house.

“How’s the thesis going?”

“I thought I’d go all Emerson and do my studies outdoors.” Eli grimaced. “Bad idea.”

James scratched his chin. “Look on the bright side. You probably prevented an arrest. Rich assholes call cops.”

“Levi deserves to be arrested,” Eli said bitterly. He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Crap. Did anyone get breakfast for Mom? I forgot.”

“Yeah, I got her something.” James tucked his hands in his pockets. With his shoulders hunched, he looked old in a way that twenty-seven shouldn’t. “Nothing to worry about.”

They were on the driveway now. Eli stopped by the truck, running his hand along the gully of a dent that spanned the cab door. “We should work on this today.”

“Your thesis isn’t going to write itself,” James pointed out.

“Don’t I know it.” It said something, really, for his current level of writer’s block that he’d rather spend his time tinkering with the truck. “Alright, I’ll go summon up some eloquence.”

He was almost to the door when James said, “Eli?”

“Yeah?”

“He’s still sleeping.”

Eli ground his teeth. “Yup.” He was fairly certain, actually, that even footsteps on hundred-year-old floorboards wouldn’t break through Dad’s stupor, but he wasn’t going to get into that with James.

The room he shared with James was small, but it boasted a window-seat. Eli sprawled out on it, knees crooked so that his legs would fit, and fired up his laptop. Writing seemed so reachable, words drifting in air and half-light, until he actually set his fingers to the keys. Then—nothing.

Frustrated, he reached for Yeats again. He’d dog-eared the page that mattered most.

_Surely some revelation is at hand…_

The rush of an engine on the road outside caught his ear. He turned to look, and glimpsed silver lines spinning past. A Bentley. Who in all of Meryton had a Bentley?

He craned his neck, but it was too late—he didn’t see the driver.

_ii._

“Darcy, you have _three _missed calls!”

Darcy glanced to the passenger side. “Are you seriously looking through my phone, right next to me?”

Bing pulled a dramatic grimace and flushed pink. “I’m sorry. That is kind of a breach of privacy, isn’t it?”

“Kind of.” Darcy held her glare for a few seconds more and then smirked. “I’m kidding. It’s fine.”

Bing huffed a breath of relief. “Stop _doing _that with your face! It scares me _every time_.”

“Who was calling me?”

“Chris Burgh. Isn’t that your godfather?”

“Unfortunately.”

“Did something happen?” Bing was all concern, all of a moment.

Darcy sighed. “You’ve met him. He’s an idiot.”

Bing crossed her legs, slipping Darcy’s phone back into the console. “Yeah, I mean, he was a little abrasive. But I just figured…you know, it was your graduation. Pretty hectic. And he’s super busy, right? He’s in politics. That’s a lot of responsibility.”

Darcy refrained from diving straight into a rant, as tempting a prospect as it was. Bing didn’t deserve it. “Be that as it may, I stop speaking to him every few months or so. The psuedo-progressive platform only goes so far.”

“Wow. I’m so sorry.” Bing, of course, was too kind to say, _that sucks, seeing as you have so few people in your life anyway_, but that didn’t mean Darcy didn’t _think_ it.

“It’s fine.” It was, in a way. It would be _more_ fine if she knew for certain that she would never have to speak to him again. “Can you check the directions? All these winding country roads look the same.”

Some people might say that every avenue block in the City looked the same, but they would be wrong.

“We go…point three more miles on this one? Why do they measure it like that? Who has any sense of what _point three_ is?”

Darcy hid a smile. “It’s on the odometer. And your GPS.”

“Ohhh…” Bing ran a hand through her spiraling hair. “Wow, I’m dumb. Anyway, you’re going to make a left onto Netherfield Road up here. That’s where it is.”

“Why did Harry buy this place again?”

“Do you not like it here?” Bing’s face fell. “I just was hoping—I mean, I thought a change of scenery would be nice…”

“It’s beautiful.” And it was, though that was never enough to make Darcy feel at home. Trees instead of high-rises, wind that was its own—of course it was peaceful. Peace itself, however, could not be elicited by formula. She—too pale for summer sun and perpetually in tailored separates—would never match these colors. “I was just wondering what prompted Harry’s move.”

“He wanted a summer place. I think he always has. And…if I’m remembering correctly, which, who knows, Nina has some family around here, so Harry—it’s an old mansion, basically, from when this was a prosperous area. Cal thought it was stupid, buying a place in the middle of nowhere.” She smiled, some affectionate memory stealing over her face and stemming the scattershot tide of her thoughts. “Harry _is_ the dreamer, you know.”

Darcy found both of Bing’s brothers equally and utterly boorish, so she said nothing. They passed a slate-gray farmhouse, the yard overgrown with weeds, and skimmed by a grove of trees to turn onto Netherfield Road.

“There,” Bing said. “Oh, there it is!”

Boorish or not, Darcy would allow for Harry’s taste in this instance. Brick and white-painted pillars, very Greek Revival. As she parked, she noticed that there were already landscapers working in the flowerbeds.

“Sweet ride, Bing.”

Cal had spoken, but the Lee brothers were almost indistinguishable from one another, a descending duo in boat-shoes.

“It’s Darcy’s,” Bing said, hugging them in turn, and forgetting to shut the door behind her. “Of course. I think I’d die if I drove a car this fancy. I would immediately rear-end someone.”

“Women,” Cal said, ruffling Bing’s hair.

“Not all women,” Darcy said dryly, though she didn’t think he’d get the joke. Cal might as well have had _bro_ monogrammed on his polo sweater.

Now, he favored her with a blindingly white grin. “How’s our newly minted lawyer?”

Darcy shook hands. Civility was easy enough to maintain, if only for Bing’s sake. “I’m well. Bing tells me I’m on vacation.” She also wasn’t a lawyer yet, strictly speaking, but she didn’t feel like repeating all the dull details of _application pending_, _character and fitness_, and so on.

“You are, one thousand percent. I will—what’s the word—_sanction_ you? I will sanction you if you try to do any work. Three weeks, Darcy! Three weeks off. You promised.”

“I left any and all files at home.” Darcy waved a hand. “Except for my HR forms, but those are strictly necessary.” She lived a paperwork life.

“I accept your compromise,” Bing conceded. “OK, Harry, show us around! Where’s Nina?”

“Left her in the kitchen. Haven’t seen her since.” Harry shrugged. “Probably making sure the wine gets unpacked safely.” This last aside got a laugh out of Cal.

“I can’t wait to see her,” Bing said firmly, ignoring Harry’s insinuation. “How’s the house? Like, condition-wise? The style is seriously incredible.”

“Not bad at all.” Harry ran a hand through his sleek brown hair. Darcy found herself wondering if he and Cal had a matching hair-gel ritual. Between the two of them, they probably kept the industry in business. “I mean, we’re going to tear everything apart in the back half—I want more of an open concept—but there’s no serious defects. Front half is completely usable and will be furnished by end of day, I promise you.” He scrubbed a hand over his jaw. “Right. Except that some local kids shot out the upstairs windows on one side.”

“That’s awful!” Bing was typically scandalized.

“We have a lawyer now,” Cal interjected, with a playful wink at Darcy. “We can prosecute the shit out of them.”

“I don’t think that’s how it works,” Bing told him, looking for approval to Darcy.

“Certainly not,” Darcy said. “But rest easy. I’m sure they have…lawyers here too, Cal. Check above all the local pizzerias.”

Harry chuckled. “Actually, speaking of, we weren’t here an hour before this old dude came by—said his name was Luther? Lucas? Prominent area attorney, or at least, he wanted us to think so. Invited us to a welcome shindig, didn’t he, Cal?”

Darcy shuddered at the same moment that Bing clapped her hands. “That’s so lovely! Country hospitality.”

_Two of my least favorite things_. Darcy dropped her keys into her purse and waited, imperious on the front steps, until Harry hastened to open the door for her and usher them all inside. 


	2. in possession of a good fortune

_“Such squeamish youths as cannot bear to be connected with a little absurdity are not worth a regret.”_

_i._

Noon brought noise.

Dad lumbered downstairs, buttons done-up wrong. When the phone rang, it was for him. Eli had carried Mom to her chair in the kitchen and was halfway through making lunch, but he could hear Dad’s conversation through the wall to the living room.

Thin goddamn walls.

When Dad got off the phone, he yelled for everyone to come in. Mom tipped Eli a weary grin.

“Guess we’d better go see what that’s about, huh?”

Eli rolled his eyes and dropped another sandwich on an already shaky tower of sandwiches. “Sure.”

Levi and Mark and Cody were in the living room, champing at the bit Dad was currently pulling out of thin air. They weren’t, however, so distracted as to forget about lunch.

“Where’s the food?” Cody demanded.

“Kitchen,” Eli said shortly, wheeling Mom to her place by the window. “Get it yourself.”

Cody looked at Levi. Levi said, “We want to hear what Dad has to say first.”

Eli chewed his lip._ Great_. Nothing Dad loved more than being the center of attention, blood-shot eyes and all.

“Well,” Dad announced triumphantly, “Chuck Lucas had a thing or two to tell me.”

Why Chuck Lucas, grasping but mildly respectable lawyer, kept up any association with his old drinking buddy was wholly beyond Eli’s understanding. He summoned his most neutral expression, so that Dad wouldn’t get distracted, and steeled himself for the worst.

“Someone’s moved into that place on Netherfield Road.”

“Yeah,” Levi interrupted impatiently, before remembering that he had reason to shut up. “I mean, I saw moving vans.”

“It’s not just anyone,” Dad went on. “Rich folks. Wall Street kid and his wife. They’ve got a bevy of babes visiting for the summer, too, Chuck said.”

“Did he phrase it like that?” Eli inquired, but James appeared suddenly at his elbow and said, louder,

“How did Chuck know?”

Dad waved a hand. “Doesn’t matter. He’s a smooth-talking bastard, can find out anything. Lawyers, right?” He turned to Mom, who had been sitting silently through this entire conversation. “Hey, Maggie. Got an idea.”

“Yes, dear.” Mom had her usual smile—nearly her only smile—of faint amusement. 

“We should have the new neighbors over for dinner. Get to know ‘em.”

“Huh,” said Mom. She shifted slightly, and her wheelchair creaked. “I’ll get _right on that_.”

“Great,” said Dad. He reached for the beer at his elbow, and then frowned. “Wait. Are you serious?”

She lifted an eyebrow. Eli had inherited the trick. “No.”

“Aw, _hell_,” Dad huffed. He sounded about Levi’s age when he did that. Add a little more liquor and disappointment and thirty years; Levi’d be the spitting image. Probably literally spitting, too.

Eli suppressed a sigh.

Dad growled, “Don’t do that, woman. Come on. Just one dinner. Can’t let Chuck steal _all_ the favors.”

“Right.” Mom’s voice was bland. “Because whoever can afford to move to the place on Netherfield is going to just _love_ Sloppy Joes with all you Sloppy Joes.”

“Hey!” Cody and Levi protested in one voice. Mark had become distracted, tinkering with one of his ancient electronic projects, and so did not join the chorus.

Eli could stand it no longer. He turned on his heel and stalked outside, out past the settled dust and the endless dark wood paneling. Lunch could wait—he’d scrounge something up when he got back. For now, he couldn’t bear to see another turn of the family wheel—Dad growing pissier and pissier until Mom finally relented, revealing that she’d meant to agree all along. Eli couldn’t blame her for finding her enjoyment where she could. Didn’t mean he had to share it.

Surely, it could not mean that.

There was no reason, no reason at all to be drawn back to the Netherfield place. But the sun was summer-warm and Eli wanted out.

He crossed the road and followed the hedgerow towards the spruce grove that cornered it. There he could breathe bracken, spicy with moss and red-brown pine needles. He was probably trespassing. He’d need to start thinking of that now, when he went wandering, if wandering was going to mean trespassing.

His brothers would be harder to convince. Bennets didn’t like being told what to do. Thing was, some of them took that in the direction of shooting holes in neighboring houses, and others tried to become English teachers in the face of familial scorn.

_You are not going to teach English in Meryton._

The forest stopped abruptly, because it was a plantation and hadn’t ever been allowed to assimilate comfortably. Eli stopped short, staying in the cover of the trees. There was a dip in the ground, and the square back of the big house was visible from where he stood.

He supposed he could go offer to pay for the windows. But he had no money, and no natural desire to apologize, so he stayed where he was. He wished that Levi would grow up despite Dad’s best efforts.

The Bentley was in the driveway. One puzzle piece slid into another. He eyed its contours, deciding that if more people in Meryton had cars like that, he wouldn’t mind working at a body shop as much as he did.

His pulse was up. It made even the breeze throb in his ears, and he kept looking down at the house and the car and the wide, carelessly genteel spread of grounds that were being tamed by some fancy groundskeeper, packed up and brought from wherever. He thought, _someday_, and that was as far as the thought could go.

There were people coming around the back of the Netherfield house. Two girls, just as Dad had gleefully prophesied. All that bluster, but Eli had been the first one to see them, not Dad or Levi or Cody.

The girls got into the Bentley, and Eli allowed himself a whistle as the car rolled out.

Then he went home.

Dad was still holding forth in the living room. Cody was coughing asthmatically, Levi was ribbing him about it. Someone had turned the TV on, and CNN blared around and over the conversation. Dad was getting up for another beer.

Nothing ever changed.

Eli returned to his thesis, as though the day had offered any inspiration. He heated up frozen leftovers for dinner and brought them upstairs with him. When James came in for the night, Eli was doing push-ups as a break from a mad streak of typing.

“Guess you didn’t hear the tail end of the ‘news,’” James said mildly, gathering Eli’s dishes.

“What news?” Eli asked, between breaths.

“The Lucases are having a party tomorrow night, for Max’s birthday, and the Netherfield people are going to be there. Wendy said.”

Eli finished fifty and got to his feet. “Huh. This matters—why?”

“Mom called her,” James explained. “Wendy, I mean. She got us all invited.”

The town moved fast when it wanted to, but more importantly, Mom had gone to high-school with Wendy Lucas. Both of their husbands turned out sleazy, varying only in success. Both had oldest sons who lived at home, but Charlie had a degree in accounting and was just in between opportunities; James and Eli were in between…nothing and more nothing. They couldn’t even fill a Saturday with work-shifts.

As Vonnegut would have it, _so it goes_.

“Shocker,” Eli said, since James was standing there waiting for a reply. “How did Dad react?”

James’ smile didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Said she was the best wife ever.”

“Yeah.” Eli stripped off his t-shirt, balled it up and tossed it into the hamper.

“Nice shot,” said James.

Eli scratched his ribs absently and hunted for a clean shirt. “You working tomorrow night?”

“No. You?”

“No. So we’ll go, I guess.” He was curious. Standing on the edge of the spruce grove, he’d wondered what it all looked like up close. Not like he was going to say so out loud.

James nodded. He looked about to speak, but said nothing.

“Someone has to preserve the family honor,” said Eli, dryly, as if that was reason enough to go. “That’s what you were about to say, wasn’t it?”

James shrugged. “Something like that.”

_ii._

“We’ve been here what, six hours? And we’ve already been invited to a party.” Bing beamed, throwing herself across Darcy’s bed so that her hair fanned out in a halo behind her. A second later she popped back up. “Sorry! I always forget how much you hate people sitting on _your_ bed.”

“Never stopped you in college.” Darcy slipped her heels off and set them down. Her feet were tired; her whole body was tired, but that was nothing new.

Bing just laughed. She wrapped her arms around her knees. In the light, her hair was almost amber. “I’m glad you came,” she said. That she said it sincerely was a foregone conclusion; Bing said everything sincerely.

Darcy really didn’t deserve her, but that was a foregone conclusion as well. “I’ll try to be fun.” She turned away, reaching for another blouse out of her suitcase. Harry had delivered furnishings as promised; the room was a little bare, still, but a freshly made bed and generous armoire were sufficient for now.

Bing laughed. “Ok. You can _try_.”

Darcy’s eyebrows lifted. “Are you being _sarcastic_?”

“No! A little! I’m just teasing.”

That made Darcy crack a smile. “I know. I’m teasing you back.”

Bing reached out and tapped her gently with a throw pillow. “See? How could I ever use sarcasm? I don’t recognize it at _all_ when you use it on me. Which is frequently.”

“Less frequently,” Darcy observed, “Than I use it on everyone else.” She slipped her earrings out. “I need to call George, but then we can watch a movie, if you want.”

Bing nodded. “I’ll get ice cream. Harry sent someone shopping. Who knew you could do that up here?”

“Yeah, I doubt they have Postmates. But regardless, Bing—I’m supposed to be on a diet.” Darcy tapped her temple. “Brain food.”

“Oh my _God_.” Bing’s mouth popped open in the closest she ever came to outrage. “You took the Bar, and you graduated at the top of your class, and I will call you Dorothy _all summer_ if you eat another bit of brain food in my presence. What the hell even is that?”

“Salmon. Kale. Oh, and if you call me Dorothy, I will tell Cal and Harry about the video you took of them last summer when they were trying to learn how to row,” Darcy retorted. “But fine. A small dish.”

Bing hopped off the bed. “Is that an—_acquiescence_?”

“That is not how you pronounce acquiescence.”

“I know.”

“_Go_.”

Bing giggled and went. Darcy smirked when it was safe to do so and changed into a camisole and shorts. On second thought, she added a robe. A lingering chill remained through spring in upstate New York.

The armoire had a mirror in one side; an oval Victorian thing. Harry didn't quite have the personality of his house in order. Darcy caught a glimpse of her face—thought, _inscrutable_, rather bitterly, and turned away, reaching for her phone.

George answered on the third ring. “Any masculine prospects yet?” he quipped, when he picked up.

It was an old joke, courtesy of—and at the expense of, now—Chris Burgh. Darcy chuckled. “I have _found_,” she said, “That Bing’s brothers are a little ridiculous, but bearably so, and that upstate New York is primarily populated by cows. At least, on the route we took.”

“Sounds amazing.” George was fine, she knew he was fine. She shut her eyes and closed her heart around that.

Before he could suspect anything in her silence, she asked, “How many tests left?”

“Two.”

“OK.” George, of course, wouldn’t want to talk about his Regents. Other than his music, he didn’t care much for school. “Are you getting along alright with Fitz?”

“Fitz is _awesome_. We’re doing a Marvel marathon, in between me studying. Fitz says I need breaks.”

“Better than watching old _Running Man_ epsfor the fiftieth time.”

“Hey, we're actually watching a _real _drama at the moment. _Goblin_, if you wanted to know.”

“Whatever.” Darcy rolled her eyes. “I know I don’t need to ask if you’ve practiced.”

“Of course.” She heard a sigh from the other side of the line. “It’s just hard, with tests and everything. When that’s all over I can get serious again.”

“I can’t wait. It’s been so long since I’ve had a concert.”

“Stop it, Darcy.”

“I can hear you turning red over the phone.”

“Am not.”

“Right.” Darcy stretched out on her bed. “Well, you will be amused to know that I have to go to a party tomorrow and _socialize_—” she said the word like the scourge it was—“with locals whom I barely know or don’t know altogether, and it’s going to be awful.”

“It doesn’t have to be,” George said. He probably meant to sound wise, but he was fresh on eighteen, so wise just sounded owlish.

“It will be.” She could hear Bing coming upstairs, spoons chiming against bowls. “Alright, buddy. I have to go. Let me know if your teachers need anything from me to prepare for your graduation, and say hi to Fitz for me.”

“Will do.” He sounded cheerful. “Love you, Darth.” He’d given her the name Darcy to start with—seven years younger than her, couldn’t say Dorothy until he was eight and then didn’t bother. Now, Darth Vader was apparently the better alternative.

“I love you too,” she said softly, so that even Bing couldn’t hear. She stared down at her phone when he hung up, and thought that it was a little frightening, how much she loved him and worried about him and wanted him to be happy.

_Dead parent shit, that’s all_. She put it out of her mind, arms and hands suddenly a little colder than they should be.

Then Bing came in with the ice-cream, and some popcorn nobody had asked for, but which Darcy wasn’t sorry to see all the same. Darcy shook herself out of her inner dramas and smiled. “Alright. Let’s have it. If it’s not brain food—if it’s the opposite—wouldn’t it be called—”

“No clever witticisms,” Bing said, in a tone that would have been stern coming from anyone else. Bing couldn’t really manage _stern_. “It’s delicious. Relax. Tomorrow is going to sweep you off your feet.”


	3. a certain step towards falling in love

_“So high and conceited that there was no enduring!”_

_i._

James was fiddling with the collar of his shirt.

It didn’t fit him right because it was Eli’s shirt. James’ only decent dress shirt had been stolen by Levi. This was the sort of thing that anyone but James would have settled with blows. Instead, there had only been a few doors slammed, with James doing none of the slamming.

James saw Eli watching him and dropped his hand, sheepish. “Sorry.”

Eli fiddled with the driver’s side lock. “This party is going to be a shitshow.”

They hadn’t done anything about the dent in the truck. The flaking paint resembled a surgical scar.

James pursed his lips. Trying to find the bright side, probably. Finally—“Well, at least we’ll get to see Charlie.”

Sure enough, Charlie met them at the door with an apologetic smile. The night switched like a record, turning over the scant, two-mile drive to the Lucases’ and amping up the pressure more than anything else. Dad and Levi and Cody, stolen shirts and ratty neckties and all, had left the screen door swinging drunkenly on its hinges. A few near fender-benders later, and the party was on them in all its floodlight glow.

Before they left, Dad had shaken a finger at James. “You’re on DD-duty for the way back. Your mother insists.”

These days, Eli could practically _think_ a headache into being.

“Glad you could come,” Charlie was saying, now, as the Bennets tumbled through the front door. He sounded as though he meant it.

Music throbbed, low and honey-thick with conversation. Eli squinted at a room decked out in too much white and abstract chrome. The Lucases had taken their remodeling project very seriously. They’d torn down their classic farmhouse after hearing one too many hints that it wasn’t sufficiently modern, and built the most modern thing they could.

It was hideous.

“Fancy,” said Eli, who hadn’t seen it in its full glory before.

Charlie sighed. “They’ve been calling it Lucas Lodge tonight.”

“Nice,” James said, at the same time that Eli said, “Oh, shit, I’m sorry.”

Charlie laughed. “It’s fine. Come on. Bet you want some beer.”

Dad, of course, had already found the beer. He was waving a Budweiser in one hand, weaving his way through a crowd of Meryton’s dubious elite. Eli shut his eyes briefly. On the drive over, he’d pressed his temple against the cool glass of the passenger-side window. He wanted that again.

“So,” James asked. “Did the new people show up?”

Charlie shrugged, pushing a hand through his permanently brush-like hair. “Think they will. Dad’s sure he convinced them.”

As if on cue, Chuck Lucas bounded across the room with a raptor-eyed focus that could only mean _newcomers_.

There were five of them. Two guys who had to be brothers, if matching sneers were to be believed; a blonde slip of a woman, leaning drowsily against the shorter brother’s arm. And then at last, the two whom Eli had seen—or barely seen—driving away in the Bentley that could never belong in Meryton.

“Hot,” Charlie breathed.

“Which one?” Eli parried back, though he’d already decided.

James shushed them. The tips of James’ ears were turning pink.

Eli elbowed him. “So?”

James shook his head and stepped forward. Not _too_ far forward. Just enough so that he was in the right place at the right time—the right time being the moment when one glance met another.

Eli wondered where James got such occasional gall. He refused to wonder if, since such things never happened to _him_, he was gall-deficient.

The girl responsible for half of the glancing broke away from her party—and away from the very eager overtures of Chuck Lucas, who was really beating Dad out for most embarrassing parental display of a (still young) night—and beelined for James. She was hard to miss, in a rosy shift, with a wreath of pinned-up curls.

It was all a little contrived, Eli thought, standing under what looked like a suspended car wreck masquerading as a chandelier. Boy meets girl just by walking into each other—did the Lucases’ dining room count as the modern version of a ballroom? Eli had read and hated too much Victorian literature, before he switched to Armageddon. There was nothing about the apocalypse in the cloistered garden parties of bygone days. Time in _those_ worlds seemed endless.

Anyway—contrivance. Yes, probably, of course. But that was the way of the Lucases; they had made their own footholds on the social ladder long ago and never planned on halting their climb. They threw parties to remind the town that they could. Tonight, they’d thrown one for the benefit of five people, and had invited fifty.

No matter that the five, currently, were unimpressed.

“We met them last night,” Charlie said, superfluously. The girl had almost joined them. “I’ll introduce you, if you want.”

“Yeah,” James agreed. The flush had spread from his ears across his cheeks. Eli bit back a smile.

“Charlie!” exclaimed the girl—the newcomer, the victor of James’ heart, etcetera—and hey, Eli would give her credit. She’d remembered Charlie’s name, and the broad smile seemed genuine, even though it was James who had obviously attracted her interest. “Hi! It’s so good to see you again.”

“Hi, Bing.” Charlie waved. He was already turning affably to the Bennet brothers, anticipating. Charlie, snub-nosed and stocky, was never hurt by giving way. “These are good friends of mine, James and Eli Bennet.”

Her face was a wide-open one: laughing blue eyes and freckles fanned across her cheeks. “I’m Beatrice Lee,” she said, extending a hand. Eli let James take it first. “But I really prefer to be called Bing.”

“I’m James,” said James. Eli, an expert in James Studies, knew he was smitten.

She laughed. It was a high-pitched laugh, tinkly rather than shrill. Pretty, if you liked that kind of thing, which James clearly did. “Oh, good! I was going to ask which one of you was which, but then again, I felt that you _looked_ like a James.”

James, well-content to look like a James, stood beaming but otherwise tongue-tied. Eli swallowed down every instinct towards slyness and upheld the Bennet charm. It was, after all, one of the few things that the Bennets at large bothered upholding.

“Can’t claim to look like an Eli,” he said, “But I’ll do my best, if you’ll only tell me how.”

“Names do have character, I think,” Bing mused, shaking his hand. Her smile had disappeared; she was gravely contemplating now. “Do you ever wonder how much the names we have affect our eventual personalities? I do.” She glanced over her shoulder. “Darcy, though, sees names in color.”

Eli could only assume that Darcy was she of the ramrod posture and dangerous stilettos.

“In color?” James had regained the power of speech.

“Yes.” Bing sighed profoundly. “I’d give anything to have that. Like—can you imagine? I’m an artist, it would be hella useful.” She tucked an escaping curl behind her ear. “Oof. I sound pretentious—_an artist_. But, I mean, I do consider myself one, only because it’s what I love.” She paused. Contemplating again, Eli was sure. He found it endearing.

So, apparently, did James.

“_Aspiring_ artist, maybe,” Bing settled on at last. “I’d love to teach. Maybe teaching would make you feel more useful, instead of just—conceited.” She grimaced suddenly. “Sorry. I talk a lot.”

“It’s fine,” James assured her. Eli waggled an accommodating eyebrow.

Bing tucked her hands into her pockets. Eli was vaguely aware that women didn't always have pockets, and noted that she _did _seem pleased by them. But Bing was speaking again. “Oh. You should meet Darcy too! She’s great. She’s—”

“Right here,” interjected a measured voice. Eli stopped short, mentally, of describing it as flat. He was slightly discomfited to realize that he’d lost sight of the mysterious Darcy until that moment—then he decided that he didn’t _want_ to have been keeping track of her. That was—too invested, or creepy, or something.

“Darcy, these are the Bennets.”

Darcy did not extend a hand. She blinked coolly, and said, “Nice to meet you.”

James nodded politely, retreating into shyness yet again.

“I hear you see names as colors,” said Eli.

It was satisfying to see surprise flicker over her face, then shutter away a second later. “I see that Bing has been making me out to be much more interesting than I am.”

“Not true!” Bing protested. They were a strange pair—even Darcy’s hair hung sleek and dark in contrast to Bing’s defiant curls. “Darcy’s a lawyer. Amazing. She just graduated, and she has, like, the most wonderful job—”

“Bing, please.” Darcy tilted her head. “Not here.”

_Not in front of these people_ might as well have been spoken.

Eli smiled winningly, which seemed the better alternative to announcing his honest opinion. “We have a lot of legal troubles up this way,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll have booming business.”

“I’m on vacation,” Darcy told him coldly, barely skimming him with a glance. “Please excuse me.”

“Not very social?” Eli queried, watching Darcy stalk away.

“She can be,” Bing assured him, pressing a hand on his arm. “She’s just reserved, and sarcastic.”

“So is Eli,” Charlie said. “That’s why he’s offended.”

“I’m not offended,” Eli retorted, to save Bing’s feelings, and allow for the further progression of James’. 

Just as he’d hoped, Bing was cheerful again. “I like it here,” she said. “You have the bravest landscapes.”

“Brave?” James asked.

Bing nodded. “They don’t try to be anything they’re not. The farms are real farms, and everything is lived-in and yet still very free. It’s so different from a city.”

Eli telegraphed a glance to Charlie, and they faded away, unnoticed, as Bing and James began a discussion of still lifes and lived-in farming or some shit.

“Want a beer?”

“No.” Eli’s gaze was dragged to where Dad was guzzling down another one. His third? “I’ll have some of your endless Saratoga water. Got any lime?”

Charlie handed him a cobalt bottle. “No lime, sorry.”

“I’ll survive.” James was laughing at something Bing had said. Eli felt his own lips curling in a smile. The natural response, he supposed, to James’ happiness.

“So what do you think? Of them?” Charlie ventured, after a moment.

“Bing’s nice.”

“Darcy?”

“Various words come to mind.”

Charlie laughed. “Fair. Dad and I invited them last night—in person. Dad loves ceremony. Bing’s brother Harry—the one over there—no, the other one—”

“They look exactly the same.”

“Well, anyway, Harry just bought the place up on Netherfield Road. I think he just got married? And Bing and Darcy are best friends from college. Staying a couple weeks.”

“Odd couple.” Eli narrowed his eyes. “So, you remembered all that bullshit to what, tell me?”

Charlie chuckled. “Telling you things is always the best part. You’re judgy as hell. It’s refreshing.”

The matching brothers approached.

“Cal, Harry.” Charlie shook hands with them.

The taller one frowned, as if he’d forgotten something—specifically, who Charlie was. “A Lucas. Charles Junior?”

“Charlie.”

“Great.” They both appeared to be trying on a range of insincere smiles for size.

Charlie, ever forbearing, waved a hand in Eli’s direction. “This is Eli. Bennet. Good friend of ours.”

“Not the first Bennet we’ve met tonight.” A handshake, rather limp. “Cal Lee.”

“There are quite a few of us,” Eli said amiably, though he liked neither tone nor speaker. “Locally.”

“I assumed.” Cal tilted his head. “All wearing the same shirt size. Or trying to.”

Eli had a number of insults relating to _size_ lined up, but withheld them for the sake of Charlie’s innate sense of hospitality. “Staying here long?”

“Just for the summer,” said Harry.

“I’m sure it will feel like forever.”

This seemed to fly over Harry’s head, but Cal shot daggers in a glance. “So many farms around here. Everything smells like shit. Do you farm?”

“Never worked up the courage,” Eli said, with an easy grin. “But there are still plenty of places to smell bullshit.”

“Let’s go get a drink,” Charlie proposed, practically steering him away. “Definitely beer, this time.”

Eli pretended to be offended. “I thought I was being _very _friendly.”

Charlie shrugged, unbothered. “Better break it up before someone gets a broken nose, that’s my motto.” 

Eli took a beer. Just one wouldn’t hurt. James was driving home, anyway.

He scanned the crowd for his family. Levi and Cody were making too much noise with Max Lucas; Mark was a ghost in the corner, hunched over what Eli hoped was a cellphone but was probably a walkie-talkie the size and shape of a brick. Dad was holding forth to a circle of realtors like he knew what the hell he was talking about.

And James was glowing. He was looking at Bing as though the world had realigned its course around her.

Eli had spent months, now, plotting a thesis claiming that nobody cared about the end of the world.

Maybe he hadn’t thought about it long enough.

Across the room, he caught Darcy’s eye. They both looked away at once.

_ii._

Darcy thought twice about lighting a cigarette—there was a balcony here, she wasn’t embroiled in any conversation at the moment—and finally thought better of it. No need to slip back into bad habits, just because the party was hateful.

The room smelled like oily canapes. She’d tasted a bad olive and stopped eating. Meryton might have its charms, if Bing was to be believed, but fine dining could not be counted among them.

Bing was talking to the Bennets, still._ James_. He was all farm-boy, wheat-colored hair and blonde-tipped dark lashes. His brother—

Darcy thought about the cigarette again.

Her feet hurt. This time of night, she should be calling George.

“Do you feel out of place?” Cal had sauntered up beside her, hands in his pockets. Cal had no talent for artlessness or ease, though he tried. The irony of that was its own explanation.

_Because I’m the only one in the room who isn’t white?_ “I’m always out of place, Cal.”

“Same.” He sighed. “These people are practically bursting at the seams.” He flicked a glance around the room. “And their hors d’oeuvres are crap.”

“Agreed.” Darcy smirked bitterly at that; the olive haunted her still. “At least Bing is enjoying herself.”

Cal didn’t seem relieved by this. “Is she talking to a Bennet?”

“You met them?”

“The douchey one. Ethan or Eli or something.” He rubbed the back of his neck, a movement that stretched the muscles of his arm. Darcy pointedly avoided admiring said muscles. “Although if there’s more than one, I bet they’re all the same.”

“James seemed pleasant; you should go and introduce yourself,” Darcy suggested.

He didn’t take the hint. “Nah. Bing talks a blue streak.”

“She’s your sister,” Darcy said. “Go.”

Cal, duly chastised, went away. Darcy folded her arms over her chest. She wanted a drink, if she couldn’t have a cigarette. One vice for another, but the beer was probably warm.

Her fingers twitched and her feet ached and she was standing still in the middle of a room full of people who would flatter her if they knew who she really was, just as they shied away from her now because they didn’t think much of what she was (or wasn’t) doing.

“Darcy!”

Darcy always smiled when she heard Bing’s voice. It was a weakness of hers. “You seem to be having fun.”

Bing handed her a beer. It was ice-cold and sweating beads of condensation. Darcy still didn’t trust it, but she sipped it to be obliging.

“I am,” Bing said. She gasped in a great, joyful breath. “Everyone here is so nice, honestly. And—” She turned half-around, in the direction of James Bennet’s broad shoulders, and bit her lips. “Darcy, he’s _so_ nice.”

“Mm.” Darcy was noncommittal. “He certainly wants to be.”

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Well,” Bing began afresh, “We were having the most amazing talk about art, and then Cal came over, so of course Harry came too, and you _know _how they can be kind of…I don’t know, I guess they can be intimidating. I’m their sister and they still scare me. Anyway, I left when Harry started telling him about the jet ski.”

“The jet ski?”

“They’re like…” Bing grimaced. “I don’t know, water scooters.”

“I’m familiar,” Darcy assured her, amused. “Generally, not personally, but yes. Familiar.”

“Oh, OK. Well Harry’s has a malfunctioning motor or something, and James is a mechanic!”

A mechanic. Meryton had a curious concept of their own party crowd. Chris Burgh would _never_.

Then again, Chris Burgh was an asshole. “So this James person is going to…fix the motor of Harry’s jet ski?”

“Yes!” Bing clasped her hands. “Darcy, you’ve got to get to know him better. He’s so…”

Darcy recognized that pause, and dreaded it.

“…_sweet_,” Bing finished. “He’s lovely and kind and interesting and he doesn’t talk much but _oh_, when he does!”

“Wow.” Darcy punctuated the word with an arch of her brows. “I see you know him so well already.”

“I feel like I do!” Bing was guileless. “And come on. There’s more! Girl, I hope you saw his brothers. _Eli_? He was so cute. And _funny_.”

“I don’t think so.”

Bing did not think to ask, _which part_. “Darcy, we owe ourselves some fun and friendship. You know we do.”

_That’s why I have you. _“If I owe myself anything, I’m not planning on collecting here.”

“Why not? They’re interesting! He is definitely interesting!”

“There’s a difference between sarcastic and interesting,” Darcy said. “And, come to that, a difference between interesting and worth my time.”

“_Darcy_!” exclaimed Bing, in a tortured whisper. Her face had suddenly changed.

Darcy moved not a muscle. “He’s behind me, isn’t he?”

“Yes,” Bing squeaked, barely moving her lips.

Darcy did not turn around. Deliberately, she said, “Well, I suppose he can take himself back to where he came from and stop eavesdropping.”

“_Darcy_.” Bing was almost wringing her hands.

A moment passed, in which Bing turned an alarming shade of crimson.

“Gone?” Darcy asked pleasantly, at last.

Bing nodded. Words had, for once, abandoned her.

“Calm down.” Darcy brushed an invisible speck of dust from her trousers. “People will never transfer their dislike of me to you.”

Bing’s reproachful glance told her that she had said the wrong thing. Ah, yes. Darcy was meant for cold courtrooms and boardrooms and places where people didn’t smile except to get business done. Bing was always on the verge of realizing that; perhaps now, at this hateful party, she had.

“People should like you,” Bing said fervently. “You’re very likable.”

_If you ever want to talk about them_, Bing had promised once, very sincerely, _You can talk to me._

_Thank you_, was all Darcy had said, because she could not speak the truth. The truth was that she never talked about _them_, about _that_, to anyone but George and Fitz. She hated to speak out of present tense, and the past was all that Bing and everyone else knew.

Conversation, and likeability, and all the things that followed, were very limited by what could not be seen or heard.

“You go and talk to this James, as you so clearly want to.” Darcy waved a hand. “I will brave another olive, and continue to insult young men who think their eyebrows are their best weapon.” She caught a glimpse of Eli, who was wandering out of Bing’s eyeline, and wondered if he’d heard _that_.

“You drive a hard bargain,” Bing murmured, rather desolately.

Darcy tapped her thumbnail against the hollow neck of her beer. “I guess.”

When Bing had danced away, content again, Darcy did not keep her end of said bargain. The appetizers were left untouched; she sought out the balcony, and sipped her warming beer against the cool angles of the evening breeze.

_Smoke._ She smelled smoke. That acrid, bitter, beloved—she inhaled a little sharply, and then remembered what it meant. She wasn’t alone.

“Want one?” She didn’t know the man standing behind her, but he was familiar, somehow. A Bennet, she guessed, by process of elimination. He had James’ wheat-colored hair, streaked with gray, and Eli’s dark eyes—bloodshot, though. Bloodshot, instead of bright.

“I don’t smoke.” A lie.

“Liar.” He grinned. He was drunk. “Used to make runs through the City. All the China girls I ever met loved to smoke.”

How to dignify _that _with a response? To simply say that she wasn’t Chinese—which she wasn’t—would seem like partial acquiescence. “Not with you, thanks,” she settled on at last, coldly. 

“Don’t be a bitch,” he began, face darkening. But the balcony door swung open again, shifting the air, and Eli was there.

“Dad,” he said. His face was grave; he didn’t look at Darcy. “Dad, it’s time to go home.”

They went inside, Eli’s hand gripping his father’s arm. Darcy stood silent and still. She didn’t have any interest in getting to know the Bennets better; she would be perfectly happy to never see them again.

Therefore, to see all the humor faded from Eli’s face, as she had in that moment, should mean nothing to her. She did not like him, could never imagine _liking_ him.

But she liked him better smiling.


	4. great opposition of character

“_Compliments always take _you _by surprise_, _and _me_ never_.”

_i._

Eli started awake to the ghostly flutter of loose-leaf paper floating around the room.

James had opened the window. More exactly, James had opened the window and climbed through it, so that he could sit on the roof.

Eli stumbled out of bed before several days’ worth of notes were completely dispersed.

“Oh, shit.” James whispered, craning his neck to see the wake of the wind’s destruction. “I’m so sorry.”

Eli snatched up a few wayward sheets and shuffled them together. “It’s fine. I shouldn’t have left them out.” His helter-skelter handwriting, documenting questions and answers that were near-meaningless until read all together, stared accusingly up at him. “Just thinking on paper.”

“Anything good?”

James always wanted very much to understand what Eli was trying to do.

Eli squinted at the page in his hand. “What do you think of this? ‘_And physicists rocketed / copies of the decree to paradise / in case God had anything to say, / the silence that followed being taken for consent, / and so citizens readied for celestial ascent_.’”

“Pretty,” James observed, still speaking through the window. It wasn’t the word Eli would have chosen. “What’s it mean, d’you think?”

“God doesn’t give a damn about the earth, so we shouldn’t waste the postage on prayer,” Eli said. “There’s apathy for you.”

“Funny.”

“What?”

“How much you talk about not caring, when I know you do.”

Eli squirmed under this, and turned the tables. “Why are you sitting on the roof?”

James only took to the roof for two reasons; either because the moon was particularly full and fiery, or because he had decided to be in love.

There was no moon tonight.

“Nothing,” said James.

Eli shoved the window further open and crawled out. The shingles were flaking underfoot, but their room was above the kitchen—a side-addition to the house, square and almost flat. There wasn’t any danger of falling. Eli leaned back against the ledge. “Is this about the girl?”

“What girl?”

“The one with the funny name.”

“It isn’t a funny name, just a nickname.” This, a little defensively, and also, answering Eli’s question in itself.

Eli smiled secretly and said, “She was nice. _Pretty_.”

James rubbed the back of his neck. “We just…I don’t know. We talked about art. She was describing her process, you know? How she chooses colors. How she finds inspiration. And it’s not all just—I don’t know, sunsets or scenery. She said one of her favorite pictures she ever did was this old couple on a park bench, because it was like, she could sense the symmetry of their relationship just from the way they were sitting.”

“Perfectly symmetrical people? That’s some sci-fi shit.”

“No, I mean—”

“I’m teasing.” A frequent reminder. James was everlastingly sincere, and thus impervious against more than two decades of Eli’s tired witticisms. “I do that, remember? I’m sarcastic, in lieu of being interesting.”

James huffed a quiet laugh. “Is that still bothering you?”

“What? I’m not bothered.”

She hadn’t belonged there. _Darcy_. Something about the set of her jaw and faraway glint in her eyes suggested that she knew it. People always knew when they didn’t belong; at least, Eli did. 

Eli scowled at the peeling shingle beneath his heel.

“OK,” he said, after a moment. He wasn’t conceding, just observing. “It pissed me off.”

“Parties are awkward, I guess.”

“Formal parties in Meryton are inconceivable, actually. What does that have to do with anything?” 

James shrugged. He was probably thinking of Bing again. Eli nudged him.

“No. You’re not going to do the thing where you find the good in everyone. There was no misunderstanding. She was a bitch. I’m _plenty_ interesting.”

“Bing likes her.”

Eli dropped his head in his hands. “Next you’re going to tell me that _you_ liked those boat-shoe-wearing asshats she calls brothers.”

“They weren’t wearing boat-shoes!”

“They _will_.”

James did chuckle at that. “Well, they didn’t give me any flak, to be honest. They’ve got a jet-ski they want to take out on Mallet’s Lake. Asked if I could take a look at the engine.”

Eli groaned. “Tell me you didn’t say yes.”

James was silent.

“_Why_?” Eli slapped irritably at a mosquito, and then answered his own question for himself. “Oh, right. Sweet, _sweet_ Bing.”

“We should get some sleep,” James pointed out. Even in the dark, Eli could tell that he was blushing. “You have to work tomorrow.”

“So do you.” But Eli climbed through the window after James, and couldn’t resist adding, as a parting shot, “And there are so many _engines _awaiting your practiced eye.”

“It’s not like that,” James mumbled.

Eli rolled back into bed and punched his pillow into comfortable submission. “What’s it like?”

James sighed. “It’s probably too good to be true.”

Eli was taken aback. He shouldn’t have been; he and James spent most of their time mitigating disaster, but still. “What do you mean?”

“Why would she be at all interested in me?”

“Shut up,” Eli growled. “I’ve been over this fifty times. You need to stop being surprised when this happens.”

“I don’t see it.”

“Because you’re you. Me, on the other hand? I expect it, and then I have to eat crow when nobody likes me.” _Like with that Darcy chick_. “And don’t try to convince me otherwise. I can hear you about to burst a blood vessel, getting your affirmations ready for my sorry conceited ass.”

“OK,” James said. “I won’t tell you how great you are, even though—anyway.” He paused, then forged ahead. “I want to see her again.”

“Hmm.” Of course, underlying this was a sworn promise that Eli would move heaven and earth to make it happen. “Brothers and Darcy and all?”

James’ voice was heavy with sleep. “I don’t mind.”

Eli did. But he wasn’t going to say so; it didn’t matter that he couldn’t seem to quell a sense of helpless fury at the thought of Darcy and her cool, appraising glance.

Better to sleep on it, and chase down new apocalypses in the morning.

_ii._

The clink of glasses telegraphed movement in Harry’s living room. Darcy had a suspicion he wanted to call it a _sitting room_, or something antiquated like that. New money made people want old traditions.

Boxes, still unpacked, crowded the hallway, but Darcy navigated around them to find Cal with a glass of scotch in his hand.

“I’ll have one, if you don’t mind.”

Her favorite bar in the City—if she had to pick one—was the Clocktower. There was a silence there, even amid the crowds.

There was more silence, here, but it wasn’t so peaceful.

“That…_party _really took a toll, huh?”

“It was a desperate hellhole.” Darcy held out her hand, reminding herself not to be giddy. One glass wouldn’t kill her. One glass never killed anybody, as she used to remind herself daily.

“You didn’t like it?”

Darcy wheeled around, quite close to _guilt_. “Bing. Scotch?”

“No, thanks.” Bing was crestfallen. “I hoped you’d have a good time.”

Darcy swallowed a burning sip. “I’ve never been very fun. Taking the Bar sucked out the rest.”

“That was in February, though. Hasn’t spring renewed you?” Bing, dangling her silver flats by the ankle-straps, sunk down on the sofa. “I’m just joking. I guess it was a lot to dive into. There wasn’t much time to get to know everyone.”

Cal scoffed openly. “You want to get to know these people? Really, Bee? They’re cretins.”

“I liked them,” Bing announced stubbornly. With her brothers, she _could_ be fiery, if provoked, even though she said they scared her. “I love meeting new people.”

She’d loved meeting _James_, that much was evident. Darcy finished her scotch.

“That Bennet family is textbook trailer trash,” Cal mused darkly. “I couldn’t escape them.”

“James isn’t trailer trash!” Bing was indignant.

“James wasn’t bad,” Harry agreed. Darcy hadn’t noticed him come in. She never noticed much of what Harry did.

“We’ll hold off on him until he’s fixed the jet ski,” said Cal, pouring Harry a drink. They laughed and clinked glasses.

Bing, looking stormy, stood up and turned her back on them all without even a goodnight.

Darcy set her glass down deliberately, giving Bing a moment to disappear upstairs. “Goodnight, Harry,” she said. “Cal.”

Outside Bing’s door, she paused. Bing deserved better than the boredom of snobbery, than whatever dark clouds hovered over Darcy at every turn.

Darcy knocked on the door.

She heard Bing say, muffled, “Come in.”

Bing was curled up on her bed, scrolling despondently through her phone. “Ugh,” she said, but she smiled at Darcy, which made something in Darcy’s chest untwist a little. “They make me so cranky sometimes. Twitter doesn’t make me feel better, either. Why’s that?”

“Twitter doesn’t make anyone feel better. And don’t worry. They liked your James well enough.”

That brightened Bing considerably, even if it was, at best, a polite fiction. “He’s not _my_ James,” she said, turning pink. “Though I would _like_ him to be. Gah, isn’t that dumb? I met him, like, three _hours _ago.”

“Four.” Darcy tapped her watch. “But who’s counting?”

Bing flopped forward on her elbows, almost sending her phone flying. “He had the most beautiful eyes. Sort of greeny-hazel? And he was a good listener. It’s so embarrassing that I need a good listener, always, but I do. I talk _incessantly_. I learned that word from you, by the way.”

Darcy was more stricken than she wanted to admit. “I didn’t say you talked _incessantly_.”

“No, no. You said it about someone else. But you know it’s true.”

“You’re not hard to listen to,” Darcy insisted stubbornly. She sat down on the edge of Bing’s bed—knowing that she wasn’t imposing but feeling it all the same. Her ankles were sore. Her head was a little muzzy.

“I want to tell you something, but it’s _really_—it’s a lot.”

The bedspread was one of those old-fashioned chenille quilts, all spiraling pink roses and dotty butterflies. Again, Harry had bought up a luxury department store or two, without a shred of vision. “Go ahead.”

“I think…” Bing tucked her lower lip between her teeth. “OK, I know, I know, I _know_ what you’re going to say. But I really think he might be…the _one_.”

_He’s never the one_. It was just like with Ethan, or Chris, or Scott—three of Bing’s former hopes from their college days. Darcy rubbed her Achilles’ tendon. “Not to be a downer, but you have thought that before.”

“Must we not be gloriously _wrong_ before we can be gloriously _right_?” Bing stretched out a hand, posed in dramatic entreaty.

“That’s not a famous poet, is it? Just you.”

“Just me.”

Darcy smiled fondly. “We’re here for three weeks. That’s more than enough time to be gloriously right or wrong, as the mood takes you.”

Bing beamed. “Do you think so? Do you think I’ll see him again?”

Darcy wished that anticipation didn’t always taste so much like dread. “I don’t know. I’m not the one who got his number.”

It was satisfying to watch Bing hide her face in a mound of pillows. “Guilty as charged.” Her head popped up again. “Will you be my lawyer?”

“If you are ever in legal trouble,” Darcy reminded her, trying and failing to pull her impossibly straight hair into a bun, “I will represent you. But you know very well that I am useless is matters of the heart.”

Bing’s eyes were suddenly piercing. “Bullshit,” she said. Bing rarely swore; Darcy lifted her eyebrows in surprise.

“Excuse me?”

“Bullshit,” Bing said again. “I don’t believe that for a second.”

“Well, you should,” Darcy told her, but she couldn’t quite meet Bing’s gaze.


	5. a charming amusement for young people

_“There is nothing like dancing, after all. I consider it as one of the first refinements of polished society.”_

_“Certainly...and it has the advantage also of being in vogue amongst the less polished societies of the world. Every savage can dance.”_

_i._

The day after the Lucases’ party was a Monday, and it was hotter than May had any right to be. Eli’s collar was soaked with sweat an hour into his shift, even though the sun hadn’t yet crawled to noon.

James was patient in the heat. He could happily tinker under the warm hood of their old truck for hours, and he didn’t mind shifting his quiet enjoyment to the stream of cars that made their way to Phillips’ Body Shop.

Every day—and it was every weekday now, because Eli had added most of Dad’s shifts to his own—Mr. Phillips trudged in to greet them, hiked up his sagging belt with a broad thumb, and asked how their father was recovering.

And every day, Eli clenched his teeth and James spoke for both of them.

_If you have so much sympathy_, thought Eli,_ give us some weekend shifts._

James was quiet today, and Eli was bored. He had grease on his hands and his face; probably some in his hair, too. When Charlie Lucas drove in, Eli breathed a sigh of relief. Grease and dust and relentless sun were aggravating enough, but even in cooler weather, Eli had little interest in cars.

Charlie thought there was something wrong with his carburetor, and James was all attentive interest. Eli, whose patience waned over the span of an oil change, waited for them to finish talking shop.

“I don't think it’s the carburetor,” James was saying, after some inspection. “Looks more a problem with your fuel lines—carb’s getting too hot, close by. Fuel’s actually starting to boil.”

Eli refrained, out of respect to James and James alone, from saying, _Well, that’s boring as hell_.

“Better you than me,” Charlie answered, more politely voicing Eli’s thought. To Eli, he added, “Thought you were working at the library today.”

“I wish.” In the past two months, Eli had had to cut down on his hours there. The body shop paid more. Wasn’t like either job had health insurance.

Charlie glanced at his watch. It was too gaudy for Eli to envy, but definitely expensive all the same. “You two get a lunch break around here?”

James glanced up at Eli and Eli sucked on his teeth, deciding. “Half an hour, usually.”

“Gets pretty busy around here, even if it doesn’t look it,” James explained.

“We can take an hour today, though.” Eli flicked his wrist dismissively. He wanted out, even if he’d kick himself for having to stay an extra half hour in the afternoon. He could be impulsive like that. Stressing over shifts and bills one minute, being flighty the next. “Mr. Phillips won’t care.”

“Whatever works,” Charlie said agreeably. “We’ve still got a bunch of leftovers from the party.”

James closed the hood and reached for the least offensive of several filthy rags, wiping his hands. “Did Max have a good time?”

“Max?” Charlie shrugged. “Yeah. These parties get kind of…out of hand, you know? Not so much about Max anymore.” He sighed deeply. He’d grown a little paunchier in the last year, and it made him look like his father. Eli hoped that that particular progression wasn’t universal. He’d stop looking in the mirror if it was. “New blood, though.” Charlie had perked up. “Pretty interesting, right? Having some visitors to this place?”

James was suddenly preoccupied with the toes of his boots. Eli said, “_Very _interesting.”

Charlie’s woolly eyebrows lifted. “Bing?”

James opened the hood again. “I’m going to have to reroute the fuel line,” he said. “But if we’re doing lunch, I’ll start when we get back.”

“Bing,” said Eli, undeterred.

“It’s five of, now.” Charlie winked, which meant that the conversation James was avoiding would be continued at a later date. “All set?”

“Is Phillips in his office?” Eli asked James.

Mr. Phillips was. He beamed when they came in. “Boys, morning. How’s your father coming along?”

Eli’s teeth settled on his tongue this time.

“Limp’s almost gone, thanks,” James answered—as if there had ever been a limp.

They got the hour for lunch. First, they scrubbed their hands with lava soap and splashed their faces with water from the concrete sink while Charlie waited patiently.

“Dust in every pore,” groaned Eli.

James didn’t mind. He swiped at his forehead with the towel. “I think the ceiling is shedding again. Hope it’s not asbestos.”

The Lucases’ grand modern house was two streets over from Mr. Phillips’ shop, on farmland that had been eaten up by Meryton’s construction boom a hundred years ago. Two streets probably wasn’t enough distance for the Lucases, these days.

Charlie took them in the side door, which led to the kitchen. They ate in between his siblings’ interruptions. One of them was trying to snake a beer from the fridge, but Charlie stolidly prevented her.

Mostly, though, they were alone. And anything was better than Bennet table manners. Cody and Levi were prone to inhaling their food.

The kitchen felt more like the farmhouse of old than the rest of the house did, even if the refrigerator roughly equaled the square footage of a dining table and there were rows of brass pans shimmering on the wall. Eli recognized an ancient teapot, and was surprised it hadn't been ground into a sacrificial dust before the altar of chrome and modernism.

He was still finishing his share of finger sandwiches when James carried the rest of the dishes to the sink and started washing them. That was James for you. Like clockwork.

“You don’t have to do that,” Charlie said, also like clockwork.

“It’s fine.”

Charlie subsided. “So.” He tipped back his beer. “What’s the deal with your dad’s leg?”

“He got in a fender-bender and screwed up his hip,” said James, which Eli thought was a really interesting way of saying _he crashed into a tree because he was shitfaced and has been faking ever since_.

Those insurance forms had been a headache, to say the least.

“A shame,” was Charlie’s only comment.

“Where are your parents at today?” James asked, changing the subject.

Charlie tried for the recycling bin and missed. The can clattered on linoleum. “Uh, they’re actually shopping for a new piano.”

“What?” Eli was horrified. The Lucases had a baby grand that he'd loved for years. Beautiful tones, and keys that were lighter than those of most pianos that size. The spinet that he and Mark fought over in the back room at home couldn’t compare. “Why?”

Charlie snorted. “Do they need a reason? I guess one of the Lee brothers said something. Dad was running through ads later that night.”

Eli handed his plate to James. “Didn’t need another reason to hate those self-satisfied pricks, but thanks.”

“I really think…” James rinsed the glasses. “They’re not that bad. Just a misunderstanding."

“Well, that misunderstanding’s getting us a new Steinway,” said Charlie. He grimaced. “I know you liked the old one. Maybe I could talk them into letting you…” He trailed off, not wanting to cross into the realm of charity.

Eli wasn’t offended, but that didn’t change facts. “Thanks, dude, but no. We couldn’t fit it through the front door. Don’t think our parents would be too thrilled about us knocking out a wall to make it fit.” And hell, Mark was the one who had always obsessed over form and technique. Eli just liked playing. It was nothing more than a hobby; nothing at all.

Charlie glanced at the clock, and Eli followed his gaze. They still had more than half-an-hour; they’d been hungry and eaten quickly. “Want to play it one more time?” Charlie asked.

When they were all kids, Eli and assorted Lucases—not Charlie, too old and wise, even then—would bang out crazy duets until Mrs. Lucas told them to keep it down.

In hindsight, her objections were pretty reasonable.

“C’mon, man,” James said, his face lighting up. James loved hearing Eli play. “I mean, if you don’t mind.”

“A chance to show off?” Eli was all innocence. “That doesn’t sound like me.” He washed his hands again for good measure, really working at the residual stains of grime and black oil. “Alright, _fine_.” As if he wasn’t excited; as if it wasn’t bittersweet and final.

The piano was in one wing of the long series of open-floor-plan rooms that had held the party. Eli’s work boots echoed over the tile floors.

James rifled eagerly through the sheet music. “Something classical?”

“Imperial marches only,” Eli demanded, then recanted. “Sorry. Yes. Something classical.”

“Chopin?” James read aloud, “Nocturne, _opus _nine, number two?”

“Not how you say _opus_.”

James only smiled. “That’s why you’re the smart one,” he said, sincerely.

Eli regretted being a wiseass. “OK. Yeah. I remember this one. The trills will be _very _slow and choppy, warning you right now.”

He always blamed someone other than himself, afterwards—maybe Charlie—for not hearing the front door opening, or the murmur of voices in the hall. Eli was trying to _concentrate_, _damn it_, and it wasn’t his fault that he let himself really lean into the keys, as though black and ivory laid braille secrets bare.

He had missed this, missed a piano in tune, missed the smooth expanse of the dark wood, and it killed him to think of losing it. Surely the next piano would be bigger and finer, but it would probably be _too_ fine for him to think of playing on. They weren’t children anymore. Their thread of connection to the Lucases grew thinner with each passing party. And he’d known _these _keys, as a kid. He’d liked the weight, the touch. Someday, when he was a professor or some shit like that, he’d go find this piano, this exact piano, no matter where it was. He’d buy it, ten years from now, and put it in a nice house where he would live with Mom and James, and maybe Mark, if he would stop being such a little shithead all the time, and the piano-dream would make up for the fact that he was planning on literally writing half of his family out of his future.

He’d be worth someone’s time.

_You’re just pissed off_, he told himself. _Tired._ _Letting a girl’s insults rankle with you._

But that was why he loved music in the first place. Calm, never complacent—it _moved_. He could get angry and nobody would know, because his hands on the keys made anger palatable. And then, towards the end—it was only what, five minutes? Less?—he could breathe, and forget that he’d never see this piano again, future plan or no future plan. Forget that he had a long afternoon ahead of him at the garage, handing James the tools that were supposed to be enough for both of them, going through the motions of knowledge.

He wished, in the suddenness of the moment, that he and James _could_ knock down the wall of the living room. He finished the song.

A frenzy of clapping followed. “That was _amazing_!”

That voice—he knew it already, after only one meeting. _Bing_.

Eli spun around to see Bing, practically iridescent, and Darcy, intrepidly opaque.

He found his gaze drawn to Darcy’s face, as if he needed to know what she thought. As if it were _possible _to know what she thought, which it wasn’t. _Austere_. That was the only word to rise in his mind. It suited her straight brows and folded arms, dark clothes and darker hair.

She didn’t break his gaze.

Max shouted from the other room, splitting up the stalemate without knowing it. “Charlie! People!”

“Younger brothers,” Charlie said easily. He lifted the cellophane-wrapped basket from Bing’s hands as she held it out.

Eli saw those every week, gaudy and drooping on the card tables next to the check-out aisles in Meryton’s grocery. Eli was usually trying to compare prices on pre-packaged lunch meat or apples or bread. He’d never thought of buying a gift basket in his life.

“He’s so sweet!” Bing bubbled. She had a summer kind of voice, Eli thought, and James clearly thought so too because he was back to staring at his feet. “He let us in, and I know this is super unwieldy, but I really like baskets. Always have. It’s a thank you for the welcome. The party. Harry and Cal want to get to know you better, but they’re so busy with getting the house set up right now, so—here we are!”

James lifted his head. “It’s nice to see you again.” His face was flushed, but at least his voice was steady. Eli alone knew what internal backflips were exacted by Bing’s voice and eyes and general being.

“You too,” Bing breathed, her smile brightening still further. Her eyes fell on the piano. “And Eli—” Eli prayed to have escaped the family curse of blushes.

“Yes?”

“You’re brilliant.”

“Hardly,” Eli said, rising. Staying on the piano bench seemed foolish. “But thanks.” He smiled at Bing, but matched Darcy’s blank stare again as soon as he could, albeit with one eyebrow slightly arched.

Darcy could take that as a challenge or not. He would not care.

Charlie set the basket on a glass-topped coffee table. “My parents will be really grateful. They’re out at the moment—so sorry.”

“That’s alright,” Darcy said, speaking for the first time. “We can’t stay.”

“Well, I don’t know…” Bing was still looking at James, frowning like she wanted something she couldn’t have.

Eli spoke up, for James’ benefit, and maybe for Bing’s, too. “We actually have to go back to work.” And he made a little theatrical bow, just to get Bing to smile again. “Concert’s over. Encores strongly discouraged.”

“You play really beautifully,” Bing said. “It was like you were talking, with the music. Like you could tell a story with it. If anyone listened long enough, they’d learn so much about you.”

“That's why I never play long enough.” He grinned, then turned to James. “Ready to head back?”

“Where do you work?” Bing asked. She was persistent. Eli wondered if that was a partial explanation for why she and Darcy even moved in the same orbit.

James answered her question—James, who saw the world more brightly than most, but who still had to live and work as a Bennet. “Meryton Mechanic.” There was no way around it. It sucked telling people who drove Bentleys that you worked at a shop probably not good enough to service one.

But the sparkle in Bing’s eyes didn’t dim at all. “Multi-talented.” She and James likely would have continued their adoring stares indefinitely, so Eli brushed past his brother to lead the way.

“Thanks for lunch, Charlie,” he said. Standing on ceremony, maybe, but the mood in the room had changed. “And...so nice to see you again, Bing.” He waited just long enough so that the distinction would be apparent, and added, “Darcy.”

Darcy nodded, if a mere tilt of her chin counted as a _nod_.

Eli kept playing it over in his head the rest of the afternoon, which was stupid and inconsequential and made him wish that he cared more about rerouting a fuel line.

He didn’t.

_ii._

In very little time, Harry had done much. During the first couple of days, Darcy found that, if she and Bing drove out in the morning—seeing what few attractions Meryton had to offer—there was another room furnished when they returned in the afternoon.

On Monday, after their gratuitous visit to the Lucases’, they came back to crates of books in every hall.

“Poetry!” Bing shrieked, snatching up a well-worn volume and carrying it into the kitchen with her.

Darcy suppressed a sigh. Poetry would offer the encouragements that she’d hoped to avoid by leaving quickly, earlier—leaving Charlie and the basket, leaving _James_.

_Eli, too,_ taunted her overtalkative subconscious—and she felt a shiver of memory, dwelling too much on the rigor of his fingers, flashing over the keys.

“Wow, I’m being so rude!” Bing announced, through a mouthful of kale chips. Nina was apparently on a foodie craze. “You want lunch, don’t you?”

Darcy rarely wanted food. Still, she’d seen some halfway decent gruyere in Harry’s palatial fridge. “Sure. Don’t bother yourself about it, though. I’ll get it myself.”

Bing wouldn’t hear of that. She tossed the poetry book aside and hauled herself up on the counter because the cupboards were so high and tall.

Darcy finished half a sandwich and a glass of strawberry lemonade, all the while deciding that she was a reprehensible friend. Bing was obviously dying to talk about James, and Darcy wasn’t biting.

“Any favorite love poems?” Bing asked at last, toying with the dust cover flap of her reclaimed sonnets.

_What is love? One name for it is knowledge_. “No,” said Darcy. “I don’t read much poetry.”

Bing forged onward. “But you have so many books!”

There were books, yes, in the summer home on Block Island—glossy coffee-table treatises and hard-bound biographies. In Newport, where Bing had never visited, there were rows and rows of down-at-the-heel paperbacks, in both English and Korean, on the shelves Darcy kept perfectly preserved.

_You didn’t always speak English?_

And her mother, hovering near present tense, answers, _Agatha Christie helped_.

She could see it all now, if she only shut her eyes. Her mother, pleased to seem like a natural—even to a seven-year-old. And the books—raised lettering crowding the covers, peeling corners.

Gathering dust.

“People don’t read enough anymore,” Darcy explained. “I do what I can to keep a well-stocked library.”

“But no poetry.” Bing shook her head. “Poetry is the food of love, you know.”

Darcy decided to face it head-on. “Are you in love?”

Bing turned pink, forehead to chin. “No. _No_. OK, yes, I do want to talk about James but I’m not in _love_, don’t be silly.”

“I’m not.”

Bing tugged at her curls in frustration. “I wish you _could_ be, sometimes!” She sank down in the chair opposite Darcy, across the wide kitchen table. “He’s _so_ cute, Darcy. Just like—ugh, his jawline? And he is nice? It’s a whole thing. And I’m over here like, maybe yes, maybe I am a little—”

“Delusional?” Darcy parried back, but she made sure to smile. “Feel free to compliment his jawline, Bing. I’m not stopping you.”

“Cool.” Bing chewed on this. “OK. I know this is a lot to ask. But…can we…maybe run into him? Extremely accidentally?”

Darcy resisted the urge to poke at the crumbs of her sandwich. _“Extremely_ accidentally. Hm.”

“You’re hopeless!”

“Very.”

Bing was grinning, however. “I love you very much,” she said, “And I made a vow to myself that I would bring you out of your shell. Just a bit.”

Darcy’s shell was well-honed, tempered by tragedy, and hadn’t done a thing to stop Bing from befriending her. She quirked an eyebrow, left with no other resort. “And romance is a convenient detour on the path to shell-breaking?”

“Life is full of possibility,” said Bing, with deep sincerity. “I’ve said it all wrong, I know I have, but I want you to always be certain—I may be dumb and selfish, but I want _you_ to be happy. I really want you to be happy.”

The pang was slight but felt. “You’re neither of those things,” Darcy assured her gravely, rising. “And if I’m not happy, it’s not because of you.” Before Bing could hug her, she carried her plate to the sink and said calmly, “I need to step out for a bit, if you don’t mind.”

Bing didn’t. She never did. Perhaps it was part of her long game, but Bing wasn’t much one for chess. Darcy owed her the benefit of every doubt.

The paths around Harry’s new house—he and Cal were insisting on calling it Netherfield, as if to take ownership of the whole road—were rusty and sweet with pine needles.

It was too early in the day to call George. He’d be meeting with his tutors now.

Without George to talk to, her thoughts shifted back to James. Eli must not be spared a thought, but James could be analyzed. He had seemed friendly and unassuming, Darcy would give him that. Fair was fair.

But—_He could be hiding something. _Something worse than a dead-end job and a drunken father.

Darcy squinted in the sunlight, knowing that she was much better at being a martinet than at being a faithful friend.

It was only question of how long it took Bing to figure that out.

Bing, for her part, wasn’t reading any poetry when Darcy returned. She was curled up on her bed shopping for accessories, filtered under “rose gold.”

“Too warm,” was Darcy’s contribution. She preferred silver. “But not for you.”

Bing hummed in agreement, then tumbled over, resting on her elbows. “So. I have an idea.”

“Involving rose gold?”

“No.” Bing screwed up her face a bit, readying herself for something. “I’d like to go out tonight.”

“Out…side?”

Darcy could see that Bing was biting back a laugh. With Bing, it was never unfriendly laughter. “No! Like, out on the town…nothing crazy. Drinks? Dancing?”

“What town? Also, I’m not a dancer,” said Darcy, who didn’t want to go out.

“I won’t make you dance. Promise.”

So Bing said, but when they stepped through the doorway of Meryton’s only bar, Darcy was sorely tempted to make an about-face.

“Karaoke,” she managed at last, through gritted teeth, “Is worse than dancing.”

Bing was a blue streak beside her, skirt winking with beads under the murky yellow lights. “Awww, it’s adorable!”

There was nothing adorable to Darcy—still in the loose blouse she’d been wearing earlier, despite Bing’s enticements to “ascend to new heights of glamour”—about a dive where each table was doubtless stickier than the last. “Shall we get a drink?”

Bing’s curls were bouncing from side-to-side. Hoping, no doubt, for her happy chance.

Happy chances were not Darcy’s area. She ordered a martini. No olive.

“I’ll have a cosmopolitan,” Bing announced, returning from her glittering venture around the room. “And some fries.” Darcy tapped a finger against the bar. It was as sticky as expected. Bing added, “Your makeup really looks good, if I do say so myself.”

“Colored eyeshadow isn’t usually my—” Darcy checked herself. “You’re very good at it, I’ll give you that.”

“I’ll take it,” Bing gloated. “Even the slightest compliment is enough, from you. I’m practically the Michelangelo of makeup.”

“Surprised nobody’s done classical artist palettes yet,” Darcy observed, with martini-matching dryness. “You should branch out.”

“Someone has.” Bing grinned. “Believe me, I’m on Youtube constantly, and there is truly nothing new under the sun.”

Darcy wrinkled her nose. Around the room, the locals were eyeing them. Bing shouldn’t have dressed up; she looked out of place.

_Or, the more obvious choice—it’s you_. _You are out of place._

Her drink arrived. At the same moment, Bing’s fingers closed around her wrist like a vice. “Darcy,” she said, voice pitched low and taut, “_Don’t_ turn around, it will look too obvious—”

Darcy guessed exactly what, or who, had caused this. “What?” she asked, all the same.

“I swear I didn’t plan this!” Bing was trembling with poorly repressed glee. “He’s _here_. Oh, Darcy. He’s—”

“—going to see you carried out on a stretcher if you don’t take a breath. Eat a fry.”

Bing’s eyelashes fluttered up and down, in a rapid-fire series of furtive glances. “His brothers are here too. I bet they do karaoke. I _bet_.”

Darcy lifted her glass. “No shit.”

Bing snatched up another fry. “He’s coming _over_.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Darcy saw the younger Bennets—two of them—dart by and start fiddling with the mic and jukebox. She sighed.

“Bing?” James, sure enough, had come up beside them, with Eli trailing reluctantly behind. To Darcy, Eli looked as he had the night at the party; self-assured, self-impressed. Nothing like the figure she’d seen bent over the piano, tight and resonant as a harp-string.

She put her thoughts away and adjusted her posture by the slightest straightening of her already straight spine.

Bing hopped off her stool and stopped just short of hugging James. “James! Eli!” Her laugh was almost giddy to Darcy’s ears, but it was the sort of thing that Bing could get away with. “I _promise_ we are not stalking you.”

Darcy stared straight ahead.

“I was just about to say the same,” James said. “I swear. The kids—Levi and Cody—they love this place on Mondays...only day they can get in. Under twenty-one, y’know.” He shrugged his broad shoulders. Broader than Eli’s, though the breadth of Eli’s shoulders was...not lacking.

“He comes to look after them,” Eli interposed. “And I come because I’m a guy who chases the feeling that tone-deaf amateurs belting out drunken renditions of Mariah Carey inevitably bring.”

“Karaoke is _fun_,” Bing argued playfully. “And nobody can sing Mariah right, but I do a killer _Chasing Waterfalls_. Do you want any French fries?”

“You will not think it's fun after you’ve heard Levi sing, I promise you that,” Eli told her, but he took a French fry and pinched it in his teeth like a cigarette.

This was not good manners, but Darcy found herself watching him eat it all the same.

The boom box started up with one of the summer’s songs, a quick-paced beat. The younger Bennets started singing, and Eli grimaced.

“It’s a good song.” Bing’s eyes were flickering to James. Tone-deaf amateurs or no, some couples were starting to migrate to the floor.

Darcy watched carefully. James didn’t say anything. Eli elbowed him in the ribs.

“D’youwanttodance?” James muttered, all in one breath.

Bing lit up like a Christmas tree. The beads on her skirt and her glittering sandals twinkled in unison—a strange match for James’ frayed jeans. Neither of them seemed to mind. He offered his arm and when they moved onto the dance floor together. Darcy wanted to see how he would hold her. Hands first, a little formal. Then Bing moved his hands to her waist and linked hers behind his neck.

Darcy realized, suddenly, that Eli was watching them too. The warmth in his gaze cooled at once when he realized that she was looking.

“You’re always looking at me,” he said, all dark eyes and glinting depths. “I can only guess at what offense I’m giving.”

“None until you speak.” Darcy set down her empty glass and stood up. The barstools weren’t very high, and she didn’t like having to look up such a great distance when speaking to someone, especially someone like him. She couldn’t look him in the eyes without raising her chin. Standing in heels helped.

“Quit your damn gabbing and ask her to dance,” growled a voice behind them. Darcy turned in immediate horror to see the speaker, a grizzled gnome with a drooping mustache, eyeing them both with disdain.

“You’re a sharp one, Joe,” Eli said easily, resting an insolent elbow on the edge of the bar, “But you've missed the mark this time. She’d _never_ dance with me.”

“I would, actually.” The words had left her mouth, unbidden, unplanned, and utterly unacceptable. Darcy froze.

Eli’s eyebrows did something wicked, and his laugh seemed to ripple through the way he turned away from her, cocky and disinterested. “You can hold the sarcasm; I wasn’t asking.” He walked off in the direction of his brothers, and Bing.

It hadn’t been sarcasm. That was the worst part.


	6. many cheerful prognostics of a bad day

_“Crossing field after field at a quick pace, jumping over stiles and springing over puddles with impatient activity...at last within view of the house, with weary ankles, dirty stockings, and a face glowing with the warmth of exercise.”_

_i._

James fell hard.

The month of May ran out like a lazy clock, each day a little slower and sunnier than the one before, and Eli observed in stolen moments and sideways glances. Three chance meetings in two days were enough, apparently, for Bing to surpass the memory of any other girlfriend or almost-girlfriend.

It was only a matter of time, surely, until James confided in him. He expected the conversation to happen on one of their isolated evenings, when they balanced the checkbook or paid the bills or budgeted out grocery money. But James was playing it close to the vest this time, as if secrecy made Bing more precious.

Not that secrecy wasn’t warranted, in this house.

Eli was happy for James, or rather, he would have been, if it hadn’t been for everyone else. Dad had caught wind of something—Levi and Cody blabbed, by nature, and they had seen James dance with Bing at the bar. Dad was connecting dots, and listened closely for any mention of Bing. He believed that one of them needed to marry rich. James was the natural choice; Eli wasn’t even in the running.

“Don’t leave your phone lying around,” said Eli to James.

“What?”

“Dad.”

“Oh.” James tapped his pen against the scarred tabletop. “Right. Anyway, we good on pasta?”

In the usual pattern of blessing and curse, however, the Bennets at large rarely dwelt long on a single embarrassing scheme. The end of May meant June; June meant summer, and as Cody and Levi had proclaimed since their early teens, _ballerina season_.

Meryton’s only real landmark was a palatial old theater. Saratoga was over a hundred miles away, but Meryton’s founder had envied its artistic appeal. Without the lure of a racetrack, Meryton languished, but the theater remained. A lesser (but still national) ballet troupe had spent their summers training there for forty-five years, performing a few times for the local community.

Dad and dancers had a sordid history, or so he boasted. Cody and Levi were eager to expand the family legacy. Accordingly, household conversation had room for little else whenever June was near.

“Not that either of them would know a goddamn _arabesque_ if it kicked them in the face,” Eli griped bitterly to James over Sunday lunch, low enough that the offending brothers couldn’t overhear.

James chuckled softly, fork tracing circles in the cheese-slick on his plate. Mark had claimed the kitchen that day for a disastrous macaroni experiment.

Dad was reading the newspaper at the table, a clear sign that he and Mom were pissed at each other. More so than usual. The muscles in the back of Eli’s neck contracted.

“God, what I wouldn’t give for a chance at that!” Dad brandished a color-printed insert. The _that_ in question was a dancer mid-leap across the two-page spread. Dad shook his head. “Look at the legs on that girl.”

Mom’s wheelchair creaked as she reached for her water. Eli didn’t see any change of expression on her face.

James looked Eli, but Eli couldn’t take comfort in a sympathetic glance, so he stared at his half-eaten meal.

“Denny said she missed us,” Levi gloated. Denny—Denise—was a regular of the current companynt.

Cody was more indignant than pleased. “How did _you_ get her number?”

“Over you? Dunno. Ask your buckteeth.”

Eli kicked under the table, but missed his target and hit Mark’s knee instead.

Mark howled. “Levi!”

“Wasn’t me!” Levi snarled, as if he wasn’t the most likely culprit. “It was Cody.”

James was looking at Eli again. Eli returned the stare this time.

“I hope,” said Mom, her voice cutting calmly through the din, “That you’re happy, Joel, with the sons you’ve raised. They’ve made an art out of stupidity, except for Eli.”

Pandemonium ensued; Dad was loudest of all. Eli, said Dad, was no better than the rest of them, at his best—and anyway, “They’re young! They’re alive! A hell of a lot more excited for life than these two,” Dad retorted, gesturing broadly in the direction of his oldest sons. “Or that one—” at Mark—“always with his nose to a screen.”

“Maybe James and I will go wild this summer,” Eli suggested pleasantly, heaping some wilted salad atop his rejected macaroni. “And leave you with a shit-ton of bills.”

“Language,” Dad growled, wholly hypocritical.

“Little late for that,” Mom pointed out dryly.

At that exact moment, James’ phone buzzed. James maintained an unsuccessful campaign against phones at mealtimes, so everyone looked to him in surprise. A slight smile curled James’ lips, and that was enough for Dad, who snatched the phone greedily away.

This got a “Hey!” from James, and a “What the hell, Dad?” from Eli, but the younger boys were just interested. Even Mark looked up from whatever he was tinkering with.

“It’s from Bing,” Dad announced, like that wasn’t obvious. “Her brothers want you to take the jet skis out with them this afternoon, if you don’t mind getting them into working shape.” His jack-o-lantern grin faded a bit. “She and Darcy won’t be going—but ah, good. You can have dinner with them.” He swiped his thumb over the screen. “Shit, you two have been _chatty_.”

Eli stood up, reached over, and plucked the phone from Dad’s hand. He returned it to James, along with a quirked eyebrow indicating an offer to seek further retribution, but James shook his head slightly.

“You gonna go?” asked Cody.

“Yes.” James spoke quietly. He began to clear the dishes. 

Mark goggled at the whole table, leaning forward slightly, as he always did when he had something to say. “There’s going to be a storm tonight. Tornado.”

“Nerd,” Levi scoffed. “We don’t get tornadoes around here.”

Before this could spark a furious debate, Eli interrupted. “Cody, Levi. Wash the dishes.” 

_That_ sparked a debate of another kind, but Eli escaped upstairs after James. James was rifling through their laundry basket.

Eli cleared his throat. “So.”

“It’s not a big deal.” James still had his back turned. “But I could go for a little while. It’s only cloudy. I don’t know if they know a lot about jet skis, but we’ve been out on the lake with Charlie a bunch of times.”

“You don’t have to convince _me_,” Eli said, sitting on James’ bed because James’ bed, unlike his own, was neatly made. “I know you’re not an idiot, going to battle a waterspout or whatever.”

James smiled. 

Eli reached for his laptop, upsetting a stack of books. “I guess Dad is not letting this go, though. Dog with a bone.”

“There’s nothing to—” James scratched the back of his neck.

“Romeo and Juliet went to shit in a couple days, basically.” Eli scrolled aimlessly through the pages he’d already written. “Dad and blood feuds wouldn’t mix well, but all the same…”

“Keep my phone to myself?” James sighed. “I know; you were right.” He picked up one of the books. An overview of the Beat Generation. “How’s the paper thing going?”

Eli held a hand out, and James gave him the book. Eli read, “‘_I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked...angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night._’”

“Yikes,” was James’ comment.

Eli shifted restlessly. “I mean, that sounds pretty apocalyptic, right? But not in the least apathetic. Ginsberg, like a lot of people, seem to think that world would end in roiling, angry chaos.”

“You don’t like Ginsberg,” James observed. He was sorting through his bureau drawers.

Eli thumbed the edge of the dustjacket. “I don’t.” But that didn’t mean that Ginsberg didn’t know too much, just as all poets did.

“I guess…” James paused, running a hand through his hair—a little shorter than Eli’s, but still capable of standing on end. “I just don’t really understand what you’re trying to do, sorry.”

Eli could be patient with James. “I’m arguing that the most accurate literary depiction of ‘end times’ and the fears that surround them is one that charts humans just not really giving a shit about all of it. Like, everyone panics when the world ends, right? In all the movies? But doesn’t it seem, sometimes, like worlds end every day, and people just sit around and don’t care? It’s both the result _and_ the reason.”

James had found one of his least disreputable t-shirts and pulled it over his head. “That’s depressing.”

“I’ll lighten it up with some Yeats,” Eli said, deadpan. “‘_Somewhere in sands of the desert—a shape with lion body and the head of a man, a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun…_’”

James blinked. “The sun isn’t blank and pitiless.” Then he sort of shook himself, as though he was coming out of a reverie. “Dude, I don’t have anything to wear.”

Eli concealed a smile. James was not generally one for vanity. “That t-shirt’s fine. You got any swim trunks that aren’t rags?”

James grimaced. “Not really.”

Eli closed his laptop. His latest unfinished sentence was glaring too accusingly. “Just wear your cargo shorts. They’re in mint condition because you bought a pair without realizing they were dorky as hell.” He grinned a little wickedly. “Have any boat-shoes?”

James huffed out a laugh. “Nah, boots for me. I’ve got to walk.”

Eli gaped. “What?”

“I’m not taking the truck for a whole afternoon. What if you needed it? For Mom or something. And I’m on the lake?”

The logic was sound. Eli slid off the bed. “Do you want me to walk with you?”

“You have to work on your thesis.” Which was true, but it was unusual for James to seek time alone, away from Eli. If he wanted it, he should probably have it.

“You’re right.” Eli grinned ruefully, picking up another book. “Go ‘_slouch toward Bethlehem_,’ or whatever.”

But as soon as James was gone, writer's block threw up a stony wall. Eli busied himself with exercise, instead, working out in their makeshift garage gym.

Otherwise, there was no real refuge but Mom’s room. He went there after he showered, to beat a few paragraphs into submission. She had turned her wheelchair toward the window, the better to see the lowering cloud-heaps in the east. Eli and his books and his laptop claimed the battered armchair.

“I’ll take one of those,” Mom said at last, meaning the books. Her dark eyes twinkled. “One of those useless Beat Poets. Self-absorbed men.”

Eli handed her Ginsberg. They were silent together, as the windows darkened in stormy half-light and the wind raced uneasily through the poplar leaves. Good weather to write the apocalypse by, at least, but Eli couldn’t help being worried. “God,” he said aloud at last. “Hope James isn’t still on the water.”

“He’s not as smart as you,” Mom said calmly, turning a page, “But he’s not that much of a dumbass.”

Eli chewed his lip. When two more pages had been ruthlessly typed, he glanced at the clock. “It’s almost five. He should be back.” It had been raining on and off, and the clouds still weren’t letting up. As if in answer, his phone rang.

“James? You there? What’s up?”

James’ cheerfulness sounded strained. “Uh, I didn’t get hurt out on the lake, but...”

Eli stood up, like being on his feet would steady him against whatever came next. “Dammit, what’d you do?”

“I...uh...my ankle got a bit twisted. When we were unloading the ‘skis.”

“One of those pricks at fault?”

“I—”

“James.”

“They’re a little inexperienced,” James said, dropping his voice. “I’m fine. The roads are a mess, so, um, I’m just going to crash here for a little while. They all said it’s OK.”

“That’s great, but what about—” The signal cut out. Eli clenched the phone in his hand. “Shit.”

“What’s going on?” Mom asked.

“Yeah, what’s going on?” echoed Dad, in the doorway. He must have heard Eli on the phone. There was a beer bottle cradled loosely in one hand. Eli followed Mom’s eyes to it, and hated everything for a second. Then he swallowed it down, and said, “James hurt his ankle. They’re keeping him there.” He tried once more on the phone, but got nothing.

It was starting to rain again.

Dad had the actual nerve to look pleased. “Injured?” He raised the bottle in salute. “James, you sly dog.”

Eli ground his teeth. “Yes, Dad. I’m sure he sprained his ankle in an attempt to win her heart.” He turned to Mom. She watched him with her usual faint smile. He wasn’t always sure if that smile meant that she was amused or pleased, or if it mattered. “I’m going over there.”

“In this weather?” Dad spluttered. “Roads are bad! You’re not taking my truck.”

“No, I’m not taking the truck,” Eli said calmly. “I’m going to walk. Unless a tree falls on me, I’ll be fine. I’ll just get wet.” To Mom, he added, “He’s not going to see a doctor for a while. James can’t boss people for the life of him, and I highly doubt those citified assholes know a thing about basic first aid. Plus, he can never remember which painkillers make him puke and which make him sleepy.”

Mom shrugged. “Alright. But be safe—I won’t last long if you don’t make it back.” And there it was again. The bland smile, the quirked brow. Eli’s throat tightened. He reached down and pressed her hand.

“Will do.”

Dad stopped him, hand flat against Eli’s chest. “Whoa, whoa. You’re not going over there! Screwing with his game.”

Eli curled his fingers around his dad’s wrist, moved it aside, and kept walking. Dad was just at the drunk stage where he was talkative and whiny. No harm, still foul. “Not a negotiation.”

Fifteen minutes later, shoulders hunched under a worn canvas jacket, boots already squelching in the mud, he was trekking the mile to Netherfield road.

_ii._

Bing’s fingers were cold, ringed around Darcy’s wrist. Darcy might have shaken her hand away, except that Bing said, “Is he going to _die_?” in such a frantic, un-Bing-like whisper, that Darcy patted her knuckles instead.

“No,” she said. “George is the same way. It’s the acetaminophen. Knocks him right out for a few hours.”

Bing relaxed. “What a horrible thing to happen to him!” she said desolately. “He’s never going to want to come here again.”

Darcy eyed the figure on the guestroom bed and wondered if she’d mind that particular outcome. Sure, James looked harmless enough in painkiller-induced sleep, but who could say what he was really like? They’d known him a _week_.

Three chance meetings and one invitation! It wasn’t enough, in Darcy’s mind, for any kind of bond.

Bing obviously disagreed.

Their day in Meryton hadn’t distracted Bing from the prospect of their dinner-guest. Not that they’d been idle; Bing had wanted to see the theater where the ballet would begin performing in two weeks. They’d wandered down the rows of velvet seats together, while Bing talked about _Swan Lake_ and, whenever possible, James. An incongruous combination, but Bing could find harmony in anything.

Other than that, Meryton had a library, two gas stations, and smelled like manure and asphalt.

(The theater smelled like dust, pine, secrecy. Darcy had lifted her gaze to the muraled ceiling, away from the stage, and pretended that her shuddering nausea was from too much coffee at breakfast.)

When it began to rain, they’d driven home. The fields were green with mist and the apple trees hadn’t yet lost all their tissue-paper petals. Unlike the town, it was achingly beautiful, but in the face of beauty, Darcy could only ache.

“Look at all those horses!” Bing exclaimed, and Darcy nodded, though she kept her eyes on the road, not on the bannered manes and tails alongside them.

_“Do you ever wish you had been a doctor?”_

_“I hated hospitals. That was just what—I thought other people wanted for me. Doctor. Dentist. Anything. I’m glad. I’m so glad I met your father, and I didn't have to decide."_

_Other people_, was what her mother had always called her own parents. And Darcy, now, didn’t talk much about _her _own, so they might as well be other people too. Other people, with their stables, and their horses running in misty fields.

When they pulled into the driveway, they saw the men, sweaty and damp from a day on the lake, unloading the jet-skis. Apparently it had gone well—until that point. Cal, it turned out, didn’t understand how to lift and lever heavy objects, and James saved him from a nastier injury by taking the fall.

Darcy didn’t trust James, but she’d been impressed by the way he crumpled near-silently, hands around his ankle.

It was Bing who had insisted that he stay, but nobody else objected; the rain was getting heavier and the evening sky was ironclad with storm-clouds. Cal and Harry, having the grace to look a little guilty, helped James hobble inside and up the stairs to one of the furnished bedrooms.

“We’ll need to wrap his ankle,” Darcy announced, since someone had to say so. She turned to Bing. Bing’s eyes were threatening to overflow with tears.

Darcy was astonished. “He’s going to be fine!”

“I’m going to be fine,” James echoed, with a brave attempt at a smile. “I—” He winced.

“Bing, go get some painkillers,” Darcy said, and maybe it was her fault, after all, because she didn’t remember to ask _which kind_—and now here they were, with James sunken in oblivious sleep.

Bing pressed the back of her hand against her lips. “I can’t believe Harry and Cal were such _idiots_.”

Darcy tried not to smirk. “Things go wrong.” She returned to the matter at hand. “Bing, I’m serious. We do need to wrap it. Can you get some ice—bagged, not loose—and a thin dish towel, and one of my scarves?”

Bing dashed to the door, then turned back, confused. “A scarf?”

“I assumed,” Darcy said, “That neither you nor the idiots have an Ace bandage?”

Bing frowned. “No.”

“Then a scarf will have to do. Not one of the nicer ones, if you can.”

“They’re _all_ black and gray and camel-colored,” Bing mumbled, but she was out the door before Darcy could defend such a color palette as sophisticated.

Alone with James, she could think. In his cargo shorts and faded t-shirt, he was woefully out of place against the linen sheets, the silk-striped duvet. Harry and Cal, surely, hadn’t been blind to the disparity. They’d wanted a little muscle and a mechanic’s knowledge, and this was just about how such a plan could be expected to end.

Darcy felt pity, and then a twinge of guilt. Pitying somebody, her father used to say, was the worst thing you could do.

If time ever gave her distance, perhaps she would be able to admit that he’d likely said it in self-defense.

James stirred, brow furrowing. She had noticed before that his long eyelashes were blonde-tipped. Eli’s lashes were all dark, dark and curling. Darcy had no reason to remember _that_.

Bing returned, a little out of breath. She’d probably taken the stairs two steps at a time in her eagerness to help.

“Thanks,” Darcy said perfunctorily, taking the ice, towel, and scarf. Carefully, she eased James’ tattered sock off. His ankle was thick and purple already; hopefully it was a sprain, not a break.

“What do I do?” Bing clasped her hands. “You’re clearly the Meredith Grey here.”

Darcy had learned first aid when she’d learn to ride a horse—so, at eight. None of this needed to be mentioned. “Go sit by his head,” she ordered. “He might get startled awake when I lift his foot.”

Bing moved one of the pillows and sat down. She stroked James’ hair softly with one hand. It was done naturally, almost as if Bing didn’t have to think about it at all. Darcy swallowed hard, conscious of an ache hollowing out her ribs.

The extra pillow went under James’ foot to elevate it. Darcy wrapped the bag of ice in the towel and arranged it around his heel. “We’ll wrap it in about fifteen minutes,” she said. “Ice first.” She brushed her hands off on her slacks. “You can stop sitting by him now.”

Bing bit her lip. “Do I have to?”

Bing loved early and easily. It was frustrating, above all, that Darcy found herself compelled to _call_ it love. “Not really.” She made for the door. “I’ll come back up.”

A clap of thunder rattled the wide windows that followed the angles of the staircase. These were not the windows that had had to be hastily boarded up, riddled as they’d been with bullet holes.

Darcy wondered if it was raining in the City, if George had made it home safely from school.

Fitz would have told her if he had not. Fitz, who had insisted that Darcy go away at all—who had dared (as Fitz always dared) to suggest that she _deserved_ to.

From the long living room, she could hear the rise and fall of voices. Cal and Harry were there, and Nina probably was too—Nina, sleepy and indolent, content to stay alone at home, drinking wine and trying to achieve Gwyneth-level wellness. Bing never seemed to know what to do with her sister-in-law. Darcy didn’t _want_ to know.

She didn’t want to join them all in the living room, either. As it turned out, she didn’t have to. The staircase led towards the front door, and as Darcy came down the steps, she was sure that someone was knocking. This in itself was strange; the rain was splattering furiously against the windows.

Darcy opened the door, and was face-to-face with Eli Bennet.

His clothes were sodden, his hair plastered to his forehead. He didn’t even have an umbrella. Perhaps it would not have done much good.

“Hi,” he said.

“Good God,” said Darcy, numb.

He pushed his hair off his forehead, and smiled in a way that didn’t quite reach his eyes. He had a jacket draped, dripping, over one arm. “I know I’m a mess, but may I come in?”

“There’s a doormat for just that reason.” The words sounded wooden and uninviting to her own ears, but he obeyed anyway.

Harry and Cal had heard the noise; they came down the hall shoulder-to-shoulder. They were disgusted, Darcy realized, rather than strictly surprised. Disgusted, and not trying to hide it. She didn’t care for Eli Bennet, either. But if they were going to invite James over, they might as well be civil to James’ sundry relatives.

Eli was first to speak. The jaw she would _not_ admire was a hard line, but his voice was all politeness. “I’m sorry to barge in like this. My brother didn’t say much before the call dropped, and I wanted to make sure he was alright.”

Cal thrust his hands deep into his pockets. “You…_walked_?”

“Roads were bad.”

“Ah.” The disgust deepened into something like amusement, and a little silence grew.

“Is my brother alright?” Eli asked, less politely.

“He’s sleeping,” Darcy said, since she had not the slightest interest in a potential pissing contest. “Bing’s with him.”

Eli looked at her. It might as well have been the first time, the first meeting of their eyes. “He drops right off on acetaminophen. It’s fine. He’s always been—anyway, he’ll vomit up some of the other stuff. Sensitive stomach.”

“I suppose you want to come in.” Harry gestured. The gesture and the smile that accompanied it reeked of condescension.

“I suppose I wouldn’t mind,” Eli agreed. “I just want to see my brother—if you have a cheap towel, I can dry off a bit before I go up.”

Cal’s eyes dropped to his boots, which were caked with mud.

Eli’s jaw twitched, now, but he stooped to untangle the laces. His socks had more holes in them than James’ had. Cal’s mouth twisted unpleasantly. Darcy’s palm itched to slap him.

_That_ was unexpected.

“Harry, Cal, make yourselves useful,” Darcy commanded, before she did something foolish. “Get him a towel, and a change of clothes, and we’ll send him up to his brother.”

Harry looked indignant, Cal didn’t dare, but they both did as they were told.

Darcy turned back to find that Eli was watching her with a smile angling the corners of his lips. “Queen of all you survey?”

“Something like that,” Darcy retorted, but it was bitten off. Eli had lifted the edge of his wet shirt and wiped his wet face. Darcy caught a glimpse of muscled stomach and decided it was better to see as little as possible. She moved her gaze pointedly to a fluted wall sconce. “Someone has to take initiative,” she added, so that he would suspect nothing.

Eli straightened his shirt as if he had done nothing extraordinary. “And _someone_ has to be you?” The amusement might be annoyance now, but it was hard to tell. At a closer distance, his eyes were amber-flecked.

This did not matter.

“More or less. I don’t see any reason to hang back.” She shrugged, feigning the nonchalance she rarely felt. “Why should I?”

Eli smirked sharply and looked away. “No reason in your world, I’m sure.”

Darcy narrowed her eyes. “We’re in the same world, at the moment.”

He outright grinned. Mocking, yes, but a grin. “Only one of us, though, is covered in mud.”

Darcy tilted her chin. “You had no other option.”

Cal returned, with a pile of clothes and a towel. “At your service,” he sneered, and went away again. Eli stared at the bundle in his arms and Darcy thought she saw a flicker of uncertainty on his face.

“The bathroom is over there.” She pointed. “And James is upstairs, first door on the left.”

Leaving him to himself, she climbed the stairs. Bing met her at the door. “There’s a tornado warning,” she said, waving her phone, and when she saw Darcy’s face, she added, “What’s going on?”

“Eli showed up.” Darcy’s tone was crisp. “He’ll be here in a minute to relieve you from James duty.”

Bing pressed her hand against her heart, still holding her phone. “Oh, God. How absolutely thoughtful.” She shook her head, cheeks dimpling. “I just _love _considerate brothers.”

“How lucky you are to have two,” Darcy observed, somewhat unfairly.

“Of course,” Bing said, not missing a beat. It was no use, after all, being sarcastic with Bing.

Bing listened for the footsteps on the stairs and ran to the door while Darcy set about removing the ice and wrapping James’ ankle. She finished just before Eli came into the room.

Bing practically greeted him with open arms. “I’m really glad you came. I was so worried about him! I mean, I’m sure you—I mean, you’re his brother, so you know that he’s…patient, and, um, _strong_. He didn’t even make a sound! And it really must have hurt!” She tugged at her curls. “He fell, like, _hard_. And then we killed him with the painkillers? No, of course, we didn’t _actually_, but I _thought we did_, and then what would I tell you? What would I tell anyone? And, I mean, I would also feel bad. He’s obviously a really important person to—uh, so many people. And even if he wasn’t, I wouldn’t want—” She threw up her hands. “I’ll shut up.”

But Eli didn’t seem at all bothered by the bubbling fountain that was Bing. His eyes crinkled warmly. “Thanks, Bing,” he said softly. “I appreciate it.” Then he moved over to the head of the bed, basically ignoring Darcy, and tapped James on the cheek. James’ eyelids moved again.

“Hey, buddy,” Eli said, in a quiet voice unlike any Darcy had yet heard him use. “It’s me.”

“Eli?” James squinted, awake but groggy.

Eli sat down on the chair Bing had pulled up next to the bed. “Yeah. You can sleep some more. I’m here.”

And even though James had seemed to be in boneless slumber already, Darcy could have sworn she saw him relax.

When James shut his eyes again, Eli stood up and inspected his ankle. “Nice job, wrapping it. Good to get some compression on there. Who did it?”

“Darcy,” Bing said. “Darcy did it.”

He looked up quickly, lips parted in surprise.

“I’ll be downstairs,” said Darcy.


	7. brightened by the exercise

_“Whatever bears affinity to cunning is despicable.”_

_i._

James slept. At least one of them could be dead to the world; Eli, in a borrowed pullover and joggers, both slightly too wide and too short, hadn’t the luxury. The stiff-backed chair he’d taken over from Bing was more decorative than comfortable.

If he had the truck, they’d be gone by now. Of course, if he had the truck, that would mean that it hadn’t rained, and if it hadn’t rained, maybe Bing’s asshole brothers would not have rushed to unload the skis, and then—

None of it mattered. The sky had fallen and James was too easily in love. Eli kneaded his forehead with the heels of his hands. Bing was the only tolerable stranger in the house, and she had gone away.

James kept right on sleeping.

Remembering the truck made him think about Dad, one dented thing to another.

_Recall_: Dad and his cigarette, bent like a candlewick out of the corner of his mouth. It bobbed up and down when he pointed and waved, surprisingly at ease, teaching them how to drive. Eli was twelve, for his turn. Pre-growth spurt.

Mom had been coffined by the screen-door frame, watching through narrowed eyes as they maneuvered up and down the driveway at a crawling pace. After, Mom had said to Eli, “There’s a man who loves the passenger seat.”

She didn’t explain it. And Eli was giddy, maybe with driving or growing or Dad smiling at him the way he smiled at James, so he didn’t ask.

James stirred on the bed. James at twenty-seven, not fourteen. Eli shut himself out of the past and said, “How you feeling?”

James coughed. It was a wet, hacking cough. Eli grimaced.

“Dude. Are you _sick_?”

James swallowed miserably, nodding. Eli cursed under his breath, pressed the back of his hand against James’ forehead.

“You’re kind of hot.”

“Thanks.”

“Do not choose _this_ moment,” Eli growled, “To develop a sense of humor. Shut up. No, wait. Tell me. How long?”

“Just felt a little weird this morning,” James whispered. “Scratchy throat. Sore now.”

Walls might close around you. You might even _expect_ that, but you didn’t expect the collapse of floor and ceiling, too. Kind of like how a growth spurt was something you waited and watched for, only to have three glorious inches not matter at all, because Mom was in a wheelchair and so of course you were taller, now.

Now and always.

_I’m never getting out of this goddamn house._ “OK, don’t worry about it. I’m sure your Bing has cough medicine.”

“She’s not”—another cough—“mine.”

“That’s what this is about, isn’t it? Ignoring signs of an impending plague to impress a girl?”

James was flushed with fever. It made him look younger. “I’m sorry.”

Eli could have bitten out his own tongue. Gentleness didn’t come naturally, not to him. “Seriously. It’s OK. We’ll get you top-notch care.” He actually patted James’ shoulder. Mom might have been a nurse, _before_, but only James had anything like a bedside manner.

This left James in the lurch when _he_ was the one who was sick.

James shifted, rested one arm behind his head. “Any tornadoes?”

“No.” Eli glanced at the slick, pitchy windows. “Still storming like hell, though.”

“Huh.” James’ eyes were at half-mast. He was trying to stay awake for Eli’s benefit, and Eli realized he needed to make himself scarce.

He stood up. “You get more sleep,” he said. “I’ll hunt down some soup.”

James didn’t protest. He was gone before Eli was even half out the door.

Eli had to decide on a course of action. Shit, the birds on the hall wallpaper were too knowing by half. He avoided the glare of their beady eyes and tried to think about the promised soup. It wasn’t a terrible idea, but he’d need to ask someone—

Only one viable option: ask Bing. Down the plush-carpeted stairs, through another long hall—how big _was_ this place?

“Everyone is through the last door on your right.”

Eli turned. Just his luck. Darcy stood in the dark hollow of an archway, phone in hand.

“Not everyone,” he said, like that mattered.

She didn’t even shrug. He turned away without another attempt at levity.

As soon as he pushed open the last door on the right, Bing was on her feet. “How is he?”

Facts were facts. “He’s sick. I think—I mean, he’ll be fine, but he’s feverish.” He tried to keep his expression neutral, as though that would compensate for what he had to ask. “I’m sorry, but—”

Bing didn’t let him beg. “You’ll stay here!” she interjected, voice warm as ever. “Both of you. As long as you need.”

Eli could feel her brothers’ horrified stares boring into his shoulder-blades. “Thank you. Really.”

He knew it was Harry's house.

She nodded, then caught her lower lip between her teeth. “Does he—is there anything I, um, we can do?”

Eli was grateful for her sincerity, even though all he _really_ wanted at the moment was the ability to teleport. “He’s OK right now. Sleeping.”

“We’ll get him some soup and tea, all that good stuff.” Bing reached out and pressed his hand. “I’m so sorry you guys are cooped up.” She gestured. “Please! Sit down. We’re just hanging out.”

Cal and Harry expressed vague sentiments of concern for James. Then a little silence fell. The Lee brothers might have some use for James the mechanic, but their interest clearly extended no further.

It certainly didn’t extend to Eli. Still painfully conscious of the fact that he was wearing Cal’s unwilling loan of clothes, he sat down on the edge of the sofa. Cal and Harry turned their backs on him, facing the flat-screen on the wall, and flicked on a game. They kept the volume relatively low, though, and talked amongst themselves.

Eli chewed his lip. Dad would have said it was no way to watch sports, even though it was a rerun, Sox versus Yankees.

Darcy came in without a word to anyone and perched in one of the armchairs, long legs gracefully folded beneath her. She tapped away at her phone in endless rhythm, manicured nails striking the screen. Eli tried not to stare.

Bing, for her part, flitted about nervously, sitting down and getting up again, opening moving boxes of tchotchkes and books, positioning them on the half-filled shelves. She tilted her head and closed one eye like an owl while deciding where each curio should go. Every five minutes, reliably, she made some comment about James. But even between he comments, between the owl-looks, it was obvious that she was thinking about him from the wrinkle of her usually smiling mouth.

Bing’s hospitality aside, Eli couldn’t bear the pressure of uneasy silence and his own thoughts. “Do you mind,” he said to Bing, even though he knew it _was_ Harry’s house, “If I read one of these books?”

Cal and Harry, for all their pretense of concentration, were clearly listening.

Bing set down a candle. “Sure! Pick whatever you want.”

Eli studied one of the finished bookcases. There were a lot of classics, spines unbroken. The Lees weren’t great readers, then, but probably liked to seem so. Eli chose a copy of _Treasure Island_. He felt eyes on him, and looked up.

“You’d rather read than watch ball?” Harry asked, opinion evident from tone.

“Sports are too uncultured,” Cal interjected, before Eli could answer. To Eli, he added, “Bing tells us you’re a writer? Always want that book in hand, right?”

“Worth two on the shelf,” Eli quipped. There was no point in losing his cool. He jerked his thumb towards the screen. “Yankees win 8-5, by the way. It was on a month ago.”

Darcy hadn’t looked up from her phone, but the faintest quirk of a smile touched her lips. Eli assumed that she wasn’t listening to any of them.

“Whatever,” Cal said dismissively. Harry turned back to the TV, occasionally yelling for Nina to get him something to eat. Nina did not oblige.

At the commercial break, Cal hooked an elbow over the back of the couch, eyes on Darcy. Eli marked his page with a finger, momentarily diverted.

“How’s George?” Cal asked at last, since Darcy continued to type and say nothing.

She looked up, fingers stilling. “His last test was moved. The storm hit them, too.”

“I can’t believe he’s graduating.”

“Why not?” Darcy’s voice dropped in temperature. “He’s a good student.”

Cal spluttered. “I didn’t mean like _that_!” He scoffed, exaggerated. “I meant, I can’t believe he’s gotten so old. Is he thinking about college?”

“Juilliard,” Darcy said. "But he's taking a gap-year after graduation to continue with his private instructor." She looked down at her phone again.

“Juilliard, wow.” Cal blew out his breath. Harry had dozed off, mouth open. Eli looked back down at his book, not wanting to be seen watching the tableau.

Bing reappeared at Eli’s side. “Do you want me to check on James? I’ll bring him some tea.”

“I was about to, in a minute,” Eli said. “If you’d like to, that would be fine.” He smiled encouragingly.

Bing beamed and ran off. Darcy watched her go.

“Tell George we’ll come to his grad party if he wants,” Cal was saying, too casually.

“He doesn’t want a party,” Darcy said, turning her gaze back to him. “I’m working out a long weekend. That’s all he wanted.”

“Aww,” Cal said. “You’re a good sister.”

Darcy waved her phone. “I’m sorry, I really need to do this—I wouldn’t have joined you all if it was going to be distracting to you. I thought you were watching the game.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah.” Cal raised his hands, suddenly nonchalant. “Totally. Don’t mind me.”

“Thanks,” Darcy said, and resumed her typing.

Eli had to run his hand over his mouth to hide his smile. Cal saw him do it and narrowed his eyes.

“So, Eli—bet this is going to be really rough for your joint mechanic job.”

Eli closed _Treasure Island_, resisting the urge to dog-ear the page. After all, it didn’t belong to him, and he didn’t belong here. “James is good with his hands. We do have chairs at the garage, you know.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Cal said, with a saccharine smirk. “Sorry.”

“A little knowledge of mechanics and machinery can be helpful,” Eli suggested innocently. “For instance, if you know how to unload things properly, it saves a lot of trouble.”

And there was that little smirk on Darcy’s lips again. Slight, gone in an instant. Maybe he’d imagined it.

Cal rolled his eyes and tried a new tack. “So, a writer, huh? When can we expect the Great American Novel?”

Eli didn’t intend to be heckled. “Well,” he said, “‘_Man reaches, stumbles forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes_.’”

“Excuse me?” Cal looked confused.

“_Grapes of Wrath_,” Darcy said sharply, setting her phone down. “Often considered _a_, if not _the_, Great American Novel.”

“I actually hate it,” Eli offered, propping his chin on his hand.

Darcy pushed her poker-straight hair behind her ears. “So do I.”

Their eyes met.

Cal said, too loudly, “Call it _Of Mice and Mechanics_.”

“Glad to hear you did some of your ninth-grade reading,” Eli retorted.

Cal raised the volume on the game.

_ii._

Bing was gone again, chasing her heart to chicken soup. There were many ways in which this could end; Darcy didn’t think any of them boded well. Between the end and now, of course, they’d have to have some sort of intense debriefing. Darcy would lecture Bing about thorns, even while Bing kept reaching for new roses. Bing was too soft and bright of heart and hopes.

Darcy, though. Where did that leave Darcy?

Increasingly, it left her alone.

She had finished her business on her phone, but that didn’t mean she wanted to join the conversation. _Conversation_ was a generous word, anyway, for whatever Cal had been trying.

They had settled again. Harry, sleeping, and Cal, still a little sour around the mouth, eyes on the television. Eli was a lithe arrangement of limbs, knees and arms crossed, his book held up almost to shield his face. Darcy squinted at him. Maybe he was nearsighted.

She shouldn’t be—observing. She shouldn’t worry about the shape of his eyes, the errant curl tracing his square forehead.

Compared to Cal, he was—wilder, somehow. There was a good deal of heat and energy coiled in him, but none of Cal’s veneer. None of Cal’s smugness.

Cal, on the other hand, was pouting. Darcy decided then and there that all men could go to hell.

She rose, phone a comforting weight against her palm, and moved to one of the windows. She heard Cal get up off the couch, which verified a theory of cause-and-effect she’d been reluctantly testing for the past few days.

The wobbling kiss of glass against glass made her turn.

“Want a drink?” Cal asked.

Darcy left behind the rumble of thunder and took the scotch.

Cal poured one for himself, too, but made no offer to Eli.

They were saying nothing, but all the threads pulled taut. Darcy didn’t mean to be distant. She didn’t mean to _not_ be distant.

Cal shook his head, sipping deeply. “Harry needs to improve his collection.”

All scotch tasted like shit to Darcy, which never stopped her from drinking it, or from drinking it expensively. “Hmm.”

“A man should know about his whiskeys,” Cal went on, as though he must. “How to mix a good drink. Necessary masculine accomplishments.”

Eli made a small sound, almost a snort. Darcy merely lifted her eyebrows. “Not high on my list, personally, but it isn’t wholly unimportant.” She drank, and her throat stung with familiar bitterness.

Cal’s smile was too satisfied. “What’s on _your_ list?”

Eli set his book down.

“Men are human beings,” Darcy said. “They often forget to act like it.”

“Tell me more, Miss Williams.”

“Men should take the time to know their own minds, and have minds worth knowing.” Darcy traced the rim of her glass with a fingertip. “Just like women.”

Cal paused, then forged ahead. “Has to know sports,” he said. “And how to golf, no doubt. Golfing, game-hunting. Mixing a drink, like I said. Should know something about jazz and classical. Dow Jones. NPR.” He scratched his neck with his free hand. “Bilingual’s not bad.”

“Most Americans,” Darcy said, imagining that the scotch was the only bitter thing, “Don’t bother much with languages.”

Cal chuckled. “When you’re top-dog, everybody just has to talk like you. I mean—” He stuttered, momentarily losing confidence. “No offense.”

“No offense?” Darcy’s eyebrows could go no higher. “I’m American too, Cal.”

_“So.” _The hourglass-shifting chorus of a dozen schoolmates. _“You don’t even speak Korean?”_

Lifting both her shoulders, not so much a shrug as a defiant hunch, _“I speak French and German and English, which is three more languages than any of you!”_

She would learn not to bother. Learn not to go home and ask, _“Why?”_ for Mom to pinch up a smile and say, _“You don’t need that. We don’t need that anymore.”_

Even though the books were still on the shelf.

Cal was flustered now. “I know, I know.”

He didn’t. He didn’t know a damn thing. Darcy finished her drink. “You’ve forgotten something in your portrait of a man,” she said, studying her glass. She liked to save eye contact for kill-strokes. “He must improve his mind by extensive reading.”

She lifted her eyes to his.

Eli stood up, stepped into her line of vision. Consumed it, really. Cal’s clothes hung on him a little—he was leaner in the hips than Cal—but he didn’t look awkward. “You’ve met a man like that? I wonder at his very existence.”

“The ideal,” Darcy returned, “Need not be met to exist. I don’t pretend to be accommodating.”

“You don’t pretend to be anything.” There was something mesmerizing about the knowing way his lips moved when he spoke. “And you seem proud of it.”

“We should be careful of why we’re proud, but I don’t view pride as a weakness.”

“I guess the vain might as well be honest.” Eli smiled, all straight teeth and charm, but his eyes were disapproving.

_“I’m going to ask you something, but if it—I mean, you don’t have to answer it.”_ When Bing’s hands were knitted together like they had been then, Darcy never _wanted_ to say no.

_“Go ahead.”_

_“What do you think your parents would say, if they could see you now—starting law school?”_

God, it always hit her like the turn of a wave. _“My dad would be glad.”_

_“And your mom?” _

_“My mom left everything of her own for my dad.” _She could have added _and his money_, but that would have been the deepest betrayal. Depending on whom you asked, it wasn’t even true. _“Relationships over career. You know. Heart over head.” _She had pointed, chest and temple, wry smile, _not-like-me. _

Bing’s face had been screwed up with sympathetic incomprehension. _“You don’t think your mom would be proud of you?”_

_“No,”_ Darcy had answered, firmly. Had _lied_ firmly, because the rest of the sentence and the sentiment was something sadder: _no, but I think she would have tried._

“Vanity isn’t the same thing as pride,” Darcy said. She didn’t like him. Wouldn’t like him. She certainly didn’t like the way her skin was tingling. “Pride, where there is true superiority, is not a fault. It’s merely a higher form of responsibility and honesty.”

“You can’t moralize snobbishness to me,” Eli said, his mouth curving in amusement. “No matter how hard you try.”

“I suppose we must seem like snobs to _you_,” Cal interjected. He didn't recognize the irony. Like most men, he couldn’t bear when the spotlight shifted. Darcy preferred to invest in a spotlight of her own.

“I _am _a little starstruck, man.” Eli’s grin turned insolent when it slid in Cal’s direction. “You’re all refined and shit.” He picked up _Treasure Island_, sliding a finger along the spine before striding over to the shelf to put it in its place. When he turned, Darcy felt sure he saw no difference between her and Cal, no difference at all.

Eli said, “I guess I just can’t help laughing at human folly, no matter how high above me it is.”

“So you try to a find a joke in everything.” Cal’s tone was cold. He had finished his scotch; his hand clenched the glass.

“If something’s ridiculous, I guarantee you there’s a joke in it.” Eli stood with his hands in his borrowed pockets. Darcy wondered if he was ever uncomfortable in his own skin. If he was, he hid it well.

“The best and worst can be made ridiculous if all you want is to laugh.” Darcy met his eyes squarely when she said that. Her skin was doing that strange tingling thing again.

“Laughing? Who’s talking about laughing?” Bing asked, catapulting into the room.

“Eli laughs at everything.” Cal spoke as if it were the worst thing he’d ever heard—a tone that might have been more convincing if Darcy hadn’t heard it employed many times before.

Bing sprawled out on the couch. “So do I! Well, maybe not—I mean, I also cry a lot. I do everything…a lot. I feel too much.”

Eli’s smile had grown several shades more genuine. “Very humble,” he said, and Bing blushed, which was stupid, because Eli wasn’t even the brother she liked.

“It’s not humility,” Darcy felt compelled to say, since Bing was still overcome by Eli’s smile. “The ability to be excessive is overly praised. People love enthusiasm, without worrying about its sense or usefulness. Enthusiastic people are called _real_, whether they are or not.” She realized, belatedly, how harsh this might seem to Bing, and softened her tone. “Some of them _are _real, of course.”

Eli folded his arms. “So if pride isn’t your fatal flaw—I guess it’s, what, hating everybody and everything in the world?”

The tiny feeling in Darcy’s chest was almost like disappointment. Bing’s eyes were wide. She was waiting to see what Darcy would say.

“And yours,” Darcy said, before the livid Cal could say something for her, “Is willfully misunderstanding people.”

Through all of this, Harry had snored.

Another silence, and then Eli laughed. No wonder he loved to, with a laugh like that. “Very lawyerly,” he said, “Sometimes a red herring is the coldest fish.”

“James is asking for you, Eli,” Bing practically squeaked, changing the subject. Bing didn’t like tension, unless it was romantic.

“Then I’ll say goodnight,” Eli said. He ran a hand through his thick, wavy hair, rumpling it wildly. Darcy’s teeth sunk into her lower lip, hard enough to jar her into horror at what she was doing and why. She stalked out of the room to the kitchen, where Nina was reading _Harper’s_ and drinking what was likely her third glass of the evening.

“I came to get some water,” Darcy explained, as if Nina cared. She could hear Eli taking the steps two at a time, the sound echoing into the far part of the house.

“Of course,” Nina said. “Is Harry asleep?"

“Yes." Darcy did not want to understand their relationship.

She drank her water in the hall between the stairs in the kitchen, staring at an abstract print of birds on the wall. Harry had birds everywhere in this house. These had all been separated from their wings. It was vaguely disturbing, how useless the two things were, when split apart.

Footsteps approached. Cal. “You’re in an absolute reverie.” He was standing a few feet away, but at an intimate angle, turned towards her so their conversation would exclude anyone who might pass by. The hall, however, was empty.

“Yes,” Darcy said. She had a sudden kick of the fighting spirit, that edge that had always spurred her on in class and moot courtrooms, in the wide world beyond the funeral silence of burial hours. “I was just reflecting on how much more interesting people are when they give insight to their internal philosophies.”

Cal’s lips lifted. His smile was sure, but Darcy knew he could not guess her thoughts. He simply was not equal to the task. “Who prompted this observation?”

“Eli Bennet.”

Cal faltered, regained himself. “That arrogant dick? Well, if he’s your type, I’ll give you his room key.”

Darcy withered him with a glance. “Crass isn’t a good look on you. Desperation is even worse.”

If she kept stalking away from men who confused and frustrated her, she would be circling this house time and time again in the driving wind.

Instead she stayed inside, in her room, in her own darkness, and kept watch with the storm.


	8. the danger of paying too much attention

_“If the first, I would be completely in your way, and if the second, I can admire you much better as I sit.”_

_i._

James coughed himself awake, shifted a little, and groaned. Eli jolted up from the uncomfortable slump he’d settled into, in the bedside chair.

“What’s the matter?”

“Twisted ankle,” James said, voice congested with sleep—and, of course, the plague. “Sorry.”

Eli stood up. His mouth tasted like copper. “You want something for it?”

“I’m fine.” But he wasn’t.

“More of the sleep-inducing stuff, got it.” He headed for the door with all the confidence of someone who knew where the hell he was going, which he didn’t.

In the hall, he leaned against the knowing, wallpaper birds and pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. If Cal or Harry—but especially Cal—found Eli rooting around in their medicine cabinet at one-thirty in the morning, there would be trouble.

Everything was somehow made worse by the fact that Eli was still wearing Cal’s clothes. Cal would have just as soon loaned him a dagger in the chest as cast-off Cornell sweatpants. Eli didn’t need to press the literal or figurative point.

“Eli?”

He opened his eyes to find himself face-to-face with Darcy. Her pale features glowed blue-white in the aura of her phone. She was—softer, still, in that artificial light, with her hair escaping from a knot atop her head. 

Eli swallowed his pride. Of course, Darcy would have called it vanity. “Do you know where I can get some pain meds for James? He’s not doing so hot.”

She stepped past him and he was about to roll his eyes all the way back at the _bitchery_ of such a direct slight when she looked over her shoulder and whispered, “Well? Are you coming?”

He was embarrassed. “Oh. Right.”

Ahead of him, she moved on sure feet. Eli found himself focusing on the question-mark strand of hair at the nape of her neck. He looked down at the carpet, minding the steps.

Darcy paused at the bottom of the stairs, less sure.

“Isn’t the kitchen that way?” Eli asked.

“It’s a goddamn maze,” Darcy said. She sounded—defensive.

He scoffed softly. “Are you…directionally challenged?”

She wheeled around and glowered. But still—that softness. The loose t-shirt and shorts. The high points of color in her cheeks.

_Attractive_, offered Eli’s subconscious. He would have glowered at _it_, if he could.

“It’s a big house. Are you coming or not?’

He followed her to the kitchen with at least the appearance of meekness. 

She pressed a bottle of ibuprofen into his hand and he assumed the conversation was over. But Darcy paused, lips parted, like she wanted to say something else. Stranger yet, Eli waited to hear what that something was.

“Is this going to be enough?” she asked. “For your brother. Does he need something more serious?”

She… _cared_ seemed too strong a word, but there was concern, at least. “Thanks,” Eli said. It was the nicest he’d ever considered being to her. Her, Darcy, dark eyes and dark hair and resolute lips. _Dammit._ “He’s just—overworked.” _And a fool in love_, but that didn’t need to be said.

She nodded, brisk and efficient again. Her t-shirt said, _don’t be a dicta_. He pointed, and she sighed.

“Present from Bing.” A lifted shoulder paired naturally with a lifted eyebrow. “Thus my disregard for the grammatical error.”

Eli chuckled. The refrigerator hum was the only other sound. There was nothing but a strange neutrality between them. A white flag? Something. “Anything for Bing?” he asked.

She didn’t change expression. “_Many_ things.”

That would have to be good enough. “You’ve known each other a while?” He _was_ curious.

“Since college.” She tilted her head. “But I imagine you already knew that.”

He tossed the pill bottle from one hand to the other. “And how would I know that?”

“Information travels.” She sketched a triangle in the air with a finger. “Bing—James—You. I assume men discuss more than sports and…Doritos?”

She could be funny, whether it was intentional or not. “Doritos rarely come up, actually,” he said.

“Ah.”

“Have you ever even—” He shoved his hands into the pockets of Cal’s sweatpants—“_had _a Dorito?”

“Not personally.”

He covered his mouth to quiet his laugh. “Holy shit. I don’t know if that’s more impressive or sad.”

“Or immaterial.” She huffed, exasperated. “Good night, Eli.” When she padded past him, he noticed that her toenails were painted dark blue. Over her shoulder, she said, “If you need anything else, my door is two down from yours.”

He stretched lazily. Decided not to go for the obvious innuendo, because, hell, no, he wasn’t interested in her. He didn’t even _like_ her. “I could go for some of Harry’s scotch.”

She shook her head. “I meant for _James_.” Then, with one hand, she tugged the hair-tie loose from her bun, letting her hair tumble to her shoulders.

Eli swallowed again. Not his pride, this time. _Dammit_. It was just a universally acknowledged truth, right, that a woman doing that was hot? He rubbed his eyes, trying to chalk it all up to sleep-deprivation.

Darcy was already halfway up the stairs.

James slept soundly the rest of the night. Eli didn’t, or at least, he _thought_ he didn’t until he jerked awake from the deep to the sound of—_Dad’s_ voice?

Shit. _Shit._

James slumbered on. Eli scrambled for his clothes, praying that this was some sort of particularly vivid nightmare.

In a way, it was. At the foot of the stairs, Dad and Mark and Cody and Levi were crowded into the front entrance, facing off against Bing’s brothers.

“Road’s still crap,” Dad announced garrulously, disreputable thumbs hooked in disreputable belt-loops. “Mud everywhere.” Everywhere included his boots, Eli observed. “Truck’s tough as nails, though. Thought we’d drop by.”

Cal and Harry, looking every inch the country-clubbing asshats that they were, traded strained smiles. “That,” said Cal, “Was so thoughtful of you.”

Mercifully, Bing waltzed in. “Hi Mr. Bennet! Thanks for coming by.” Hearing Bing talk, you’d have thought she’d invited them. “James is sick,” she added, apologetically.

“Sick?”

“Just a fever,” Eli explained, with the eagerness generally reserved for walking over a bed of hot coals. “Sprained ankle, too, but he’ll live.” He’d have to. Their health insurance was shaky at best.

“I don’t know,” Dad said, with an exaggerated grimace. “Good of you to take care of him, sweetheart,” he added, to Bing. “Keep that up, would you?”

Eli clenched his fists. “Dad, I think James just wants to go home. We’ve imposed long enough.”

“It’s been totally lovely and fine.” Bing was the saving grace of any situation, it seemed. That was something she had in common with James. Less than two weeks in, sure, but Eli could see the reasons for James’ interest, clear as day. “Here, why don’t you all come in for a minute, before we call him down?”

“Boots?” Mark asked, shuffling. It was the first thing he’d said.

“Don’t worry about it!” Bing assured them blithely. Eli saw Harry and Cal stiffen.

Four Bennets tramped in, four sets of footprints smeared on the tiled floor. They sat down on the smooth sofas and Eli stood in the doorway, hands in his pockets.

Dad must have caught Eli’s look of disapproval, for he said loudly, “Hope Eli hasn’t been giving you too much trouble. Mouthy son of a—”

“I just _love_ this whole town, you know?” Bing’s voice was bright and cordial, and Eli almost threw away all loyalty to James and fell in love with her right then and there. He kept his eyes on Bing; he couldn’t bear to look at Harry and Cal—or at Darcy, most of all. She’d come in to hear that last comment of Dad’s. No doubt all of them, except Bing, were in the throes of commingled pity and glee.

“Not a bad place,” Dad said, obviously approving of Bing. Or to be more exact, approving of her chest. Eli was suddenly grateful that James wasn’t here to be mortified. “It’s actually a pretty damn fine town. Bankers. Lawyers. The lawyers’ll get you out of anything. I’d know.” He laughed. Eli bit the inside of his cheek until it bled.

“I’ve never heard of any of the firms here,” Darcy said coolly.

Dad narrowed his eyes at her. He’d been drunk at the Lucases’ party, but he always remembered a grudge. “Nothing about our kind good enough for you? It’s true what they say—no bitch like a rich bitch.”

Darcy stared stonily at him, but Cal’s mouth actually fell open in horror. Eli wanted to reach over and shut it for him. He also wanted to die.

Bing, pale as a ghost, said quickly, “Darcy is a born and bred city-girl, and I guess I am too! But…I think the country…I think it’s just as wonderful in its own way. No subways, for one thing. That’s nice.” She rallied. “Honestly, it inspires me to paint. And I may have an art degree, and an aspiration to actually do business with it, but I have the worst case of just—I just forget my passion, sometimes. It slips away. And coming here gives me a whole new world to consider.”

Dad was mollified again, like he hadn’t just called one of Harry’s _invited _guests a bitch. “Oh, yes, very picturesque.” He mangled the pronunciation of _picturesque _as much as Eli had expected. “Ballet, too. It’s a riot when they come around. Three days?”

“Two.” Levi grinned impishly.

“Wild,” Dad mused, matching Levi’s grin. “Absolutely wild.”

Levi, having joined the conversation, was not ready to butt out again. “Bing,” he coaxed—Levi could be charming when he coaxed—“You should _totally_ throw a party here. Baller house.”

Bing flicked a glance toward Harry. “Maybe! When your brother is all better, of course.”

“Speaking of which,” Eli put in, before Dad could start in again, “I—we should go get him.” He glanced around. “He kind of needs to, uh, keep his foot up, though.”

Dad jabbed a finger at him. “Well, you can walk home. There’ll be room in the truck that way. And hey, you walked here. You walk everywhere.”

“Yes,” Cal agreed, with a maddening smirk that managed to mock both Dad and Eli. “He does.”

Bing frowned, thinking. Then she looked at Eli and smiled encouragingly. “Why don’t I show your family around, uh, outdoors? While you get James?”

“Stay away from my car,” Darcy murmured, for Bing’s ears. Eli heard it, though. Darcy left the room without even a word to any of the rest.

As for Eli, he tried to communicate all his gratitude in a look to Bing and then hurried upstairs. James was awake, with a stuffed-up nose and the inability to do anything but hobble. At least his fever had broken.

“Dad and everyone came?” he asked. His brow wrinkled with concern. “Was it—bad?”

Eli forced down the bile in his throat and shook his head. “Don’t worry, man. Bing wasn’t too horrified. Now, downstairs? Think you can manage it?”

“Thanks for everything,” murmured James.

“Don’t breathe on me,” Eli ordered. “I don’t want to catch whatever plague you’ve got.” But he adjusted James’ arm around his shoulder and helped him on the steps.

Harry and Cal met them halfway up. They were almost pleasant to James. That was the most Eli could say for them.

They might wish James well, but they wouldn’t wish him back again.

The world outside was fresh and green and a little worse for wear. Rivulets of rainwater snaked along the gravel into shale-flecked deltas. A few branches had fallen at the edge of the house. James, blinking in the sunshine, was quiet and shy. His family greeted him, as usual, with too much enthusiasm and too little volume control.

Eli helped him up into the truck. “Prop your foot up on the seat,” he said. “Mark, get in with him. You two cram in the front with Dad.”

“What about you?” James asked. His eyes were glassy, but he was still wasting his time worrying over Eli.

“I’m walking home. Like a realman.”

“James?” Bing had come up behind Eli. Eli wished that she could have a moment alone with James, without Dad and her brothers and everyone else watching. But this was life. Life gave you lemons and then trapped you by storm in a house with a bunch of snobbish assholes, whereupon your vulgar family showed up and insulted the universe. Drink _that_ lemonade.

“I’m so sorry to have given you all this trouble,” James was saying.

Bing patted him on the knee. Eli was pretty sure that her smile was doing more for his brother’s recovery process than a doctor could. “You’re no trouble at all, James Bennet,” she said.

Dad said something dreadful, and Eli said, “I think you’d better be off.” But the unpleasantness lingered with him, the shame of the whole thing, and he couldn’t be relieved even when the truck had grumbled and splattered away down the wet road.

Left alone, he was even more of an outsider. “I’d better start walking,” he said, to Bing, though loud enough for the rest of the company to hear. Darcy was on the doorstep now.

Bing slapped him lightly on the arm. “Walking? You are _totally_ staying for lunch.”

He knew that in a perfect world, she’d ask _James_ to stay for lunch, but it was never a perfect world. Even so, Bing didn’t look at him like he was second-best.

“I’ve already been an uninvited inconvenience,” Eli told her. “Let’s just say it outright: I’ve eaten enough of your food.”

Bing tried her best at _stern_. The attempt was thwarted by the sprinkling of freckles over her nose. “You are staying for lunch. Unless, like, you actually have an appointment or work or something.”

“I don’t work till five,” he said. “So, thanks.”

Cal and Harry said nothing. He thought he heard Darcy sigh.

“Great!” Bing beamed at him. “Oh, I’m so glad!” She darted into the house.

Cal murmured something to Harry, and then turned to Eli with a toothy smile. “While we’re waiting, want to try out Harry’s new pool table?”

It was a challenge. And it was obviously for Darcy’s benefit, though she was staring calmly off at the wind-tangled treetops, seemingly uninterested in their conversation.

Eli hadn’t escaped the clutches of Netherfield just yet.

_ii._

Darcy should really say something to Bing, should remind her that it was a bad idea, getting close to this batshit-crazy family and their mud-caked boots.

She might not actually _say_ batshit, to Bing. It was insensitive.

“Darcy?” Cal paused at the door of what he and Harry had dubbed the “rec room.” “You coming?”

She said, against her better judgment, “If you insist.”

She should have eaten alone, read a book, called George. She should have—

Eli picked up a cue.

Cal reached for the chalk. “Sure _you_ don’t want to play?”

“Me?” Darcy feigned astonishment, though she’d been expecting the question. “No, thank you. That would defeat either of your potential purposes in playing.”

“Girls,” Cal observed to Eli, conspiratorially. “Never know what they’re thinking.”

Eli’s eyes, fixed on Darcy, didn’t waver. “Guess not,” he said. “The most important thing is not _asking_ what they’re thinking.” His lips quirked at the corners. “Drives ‘em crazy.”

Darcy didn’t flirt. It wasn’t in her DNA. She folded her arms over chest and waited.

Right on schedule, Cal asked, “What do you mean? _Either purpose_?”

Darcy said calmly, “First, you want to beat Eli, not me. That much is obvious.”

Cal reddened. Bing, who’d come in to watch as well, stifled a giggle.

“Second,” Darcy went on, ruthlessly, “I’ll be much better able to admire whatever you’re trying to show off if I stand to the side.”

Cal offered no retort. Eli’s eyes danced with amusement. “In that case,” he said, “I’ll roll my sleeves up to give you uninhibited access to my forearms.”

Darcy tilted her chin. “Now really. Would I be able to take in _all that_ if I was concentrated on winning?”

Eli tapped the end of his cue, looking thoughtful. “You’re always concentrated on winning.”

“No shit,” grumbled Cal. “Let’s just play.”

They played. Eli won handily. Darcy, despite every warning her brain dispensed, followed his every move—clever grip and taut shoulders. There was a cat-like grace to him. She didn’t have to be imaginative to think of better uses for those nimble hands.

And just like that, she’d gone too far. She’d let too much of him in, and the realization sent her stomach roiling.

She hurried away, not bothering to listen to the tail end of Cal’s complaints that Eli had an unfair advantage from probably _years_ of hustling at dive bars. 

In her room, she stood by the window. The world was apple-green in May. It was like nothing she knew, these fields and trees and amber-eyed boys. She missed her street corners, her river-walks, her self-designed loneliness.

Last night, she’d been too friendly. She’d been taken in by his sleep-tangled eyelashes, by the way his smile was a little crooked on one side. She had let him tease her, laughing as he did. She had spent more than half a decade as Bing’s friend, stonewalling the advances of Bing’s too-charming brother, only to let herself go with this—this _stranger_.

Worse. She had come through worse. Darcy shut her eyes, balled up the anxiety in her chest until it was small enough to let her breathe. He would leave after lunch and she _would _say something to Bing, she wouldn’t have to keep seeing his disgusting family, she wouldn’t—

There was a knock on her door. It was Bing.

“Lunch is ready!”

“Not hungry,” Darcy said, which wasn’t true.

The minutes ticked by. At last, she heard the front door open and close. Across the lawn, Eli Bennet walked with his shoulders back. She watched him go until he was a dark blur in the distance, until he was very small, until he disappeared altogether.

Downstairs, Bing had made her a sandwich after all.

“I’m a little hungry, I suppose,” Darcy conceded. She took one of the kitchen chairs.

“If I had to spend one more _second_ with that smart-mouthed prick,” Cal raged, stumping in.

“That smart-mouthed prick beat you at pool!” Bing reminded him, and Cal shot her a death-glare.

“It’s a good thing they’re gone,” Darcy observed. Bing avoided her gaze. “Harry is entertaining enough guests as it is.”

Cal, apparently, was not through with being bitter. “Surprised to hear _you_ say so,” he said. “You seemed to like him pretty damn well.”

Darcy looked at him.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

“I should think so.”

He shuffled out without another word.

“What was _that _about?” Bing’s italics were indignant. 

“Cal,” Darcy said, carrying her plate to the sink, “Is insecure because Eli is less privileged and more confident than he is.”

“Oh, yeah, Cal is being a total dick.” Bing waved a hand. “I mean, what did he mean about you liking him? I thought…I thought you didn’t.”

Darcy rinsed the plate. “I don’t. He’s full of himself. And in case you’re forgetting, his father called me a bitch.” This wasn’t fair to Eli, and she knew it. 

Bing sank down at the kitchen table with her head on her arms, which sent her hair cascading outwards in a halo. “That was awful! I don’t know why their dad is so…different from them. He _is_ different, you can see that, right? James and Eli aren’t like him at all.”

It was more than that. There was different, and then there was the way that Eli and his father had looked at each other. Darcy wouldn’t insult him with her pity. “Bing,” she said, distinctly, “I know James is very friendly. But people’s families are a good insight into who they are. Keep that in mind.”

Bing lifted her head. “Do you think I’m like my brothers?”

Darcy opened her mouth and shut it again.

“It’s OK if you think he’s cute, or whatever,” Bing said, very gently. “It doesn’t have to be, like, a cataclysmic event or whatever you’d call it.”

Something stabbed at Darcy. “Bing,” she said. “It’s not like that. I need you to understand—I can’t—I’m not going to explain myself. I just spoke my mind for your own good.” That sounded patronizing. “Forget it,” she said. “I’m tired. You know how I get.”

Bing smiled at her. “I’m not mad,” she said. “I’m never mad at you.”

Darcy pursed her lips. The world was cruel, but she could keep herself the same. There was a safety in _that_, which she wouldn’t even _want_ Bing to understand. In a little while, she’d be gone from here. She would leave this green place for the city, for all the blessed anonymity of a crowd.

She told Bing that she was going to go lie down.


	9. coming prepared to admire them

_“Great humility of manner now a good deal counteracted by the self-conceit of a weak head, and the consequential feelings of early and unexpected prosperity_._”_

_i._

June began with a heat wave. At the garage, Eli’s patience dwindled from _very little _to _none at all_. He’d spent months telling himself that he was picking up extra shifts—Dad’s shifts. It was increasingly apparent that Dad had no plans, present or future, of picking up his own shifts ever again.

Of course, Dad still visited the garage whenever he wanted. He came to “chew the fat,” as he put it, with Mr. Phillips.

“Your father’s getting on a bit better,” Mr. Phillips announced, whenever Dad had come and gone. It was a slight variation to the usual dialogue, though not a welcome one.

“Hmm,” said Eli. He wasn’t James. He had no talent for platitudes.

For the sake of his ankle and his waning head-cold, James took two full days off. Eli had waged a campaign of threats and requests; the eventual victory was a narrow one. It seemed that after twenty-seven years of being laid-back as hell, James had decided to be stubborn.

“It’s probably just a strain,” he’d snuffle, trying not to wince, whenever Eli caught him up and around, _doing things_. “I can still be useful.”

“There’s nothing useful about you turning a strain into a break,” Eli would tell him, but then the next time he turned around, James was on his feet again.

“Now you have two crippled relatives,” Mom pointed out wryly.

On Wednesday—full of woe, if one believed the rhyme—Eli was on his own at the garage, and Dad shuffled in with company in tow.

At first, Eli thought she was a dancer. In his own defense, he was halfway under a truck at the time. The ballet had arrived in Meryton the day before; Levi and Cody were already hanging around the dancers’ entrance, tongues practically lolling. Dad _would_ want to get in on the fun.

“Eli!” Dad bellowed.

Maybe if he waited, the concrete beneath him would yield out of mercy, swallowing him whole.

“Elijah!” Full name, now. Usually that was only Mom’s thing. To his lady friend, Dad said, “Sorry. This one’s a bit of a cuss.”

Eli resurfaced.

She…wasn’t a dancer.

The wedge-shaped hair, the fuchsia tweed. Wait. No, that _was_ right. _Fuchsia tweed_.

“Hi!” Her voice was somehow—fluorescent. “Tatianna Collins. Tat for short.”

Eli reached for a rag and started cleaning the grease from his hands.

Dad rested an elbow on the hood of Ed Johnson’s Toyota. “Tatianna here is new in town.”

Eli raised his eyebrows and pressed his lips together. An acknowledgement, if nothing else.

Dad drummed his fingers. “Eli, look alive.”

“So nice to meet you,” Eli told her, pasting on an intentionally thin smile.

“You too!” she bubbled. “Your dad tells me you’re one of _five _brothers?”

_Shit_. She was practically drooling. “Dad, what are you doing here?” He needed to get to the bottom of…whatever this was.

Dad was put-upon. He liked an appreciative audience. “Tatianna is casing the joint.”

“For a crime?”

“Christ, you’re such a smartass.” Dad sighed explosively. “No.” He smiled winningly at Tatianna, who beamed back. “She’s a political aide. She’s a guber—gubernational—”

“Gubernatorial,” Tatianna interjected, gleeful.

“First two syllables got you covered,” Eli said, half under his breath.

“Christopher Burgh,” Dad announced, eyes glinting. “Heard of him? Gonna take over the whole state.”

“No idea who that is,” Eli said. It wasn’t strictly true, but they didn’t need to know that.

“He’s only the first candidate for governor who has an extremely diverse cultural background,” Tatianna announced, shifting from one stiletto to the other. “German, Irish, Scottish, English, _and _one-sixteenth Native American.”

Eli didn't laugh. “So, did your car break down? I assume you need a mechanic for something.”

“No. No need for any of that.” Dad waved a hand. “Burgh wants to put a pipeline in. Natural gas. Subsidies.” He rubbed his fingers together. “Get a load of some green, boy.”

“What does that have to do with us?” Eli’s stomach soured. 

“I’m coming for dinner! And I’m feasting my eyes as well.” She widened them to an unnerving degree. “Rolling, _unused_ farmland? That’s exactly what Future Governor Burgh is looking for.” Eli could hear the capitalization.

“Dad, a minute?” Eli dropped the rag and seized Dad’s elbow, pulling him aside. _Channel James_, he reminded himself. _Don’t get his back up._

But Dad was already rocking back on his heels, ready for a fight. “You got a problem?”

“I just don’t know…do you really think dinner’s a good idea? James is barely getting around...” He kept his voice as level as he could.

Dad sputtered. “We got steak in the freezer!” He clapped Eli on the shoulder and lowered his voice. “Now if you’re done with the bitch act, why don’t you worry about getting us on the _inside track_, if you know what I mean. She’d screw anything. I can always tell.”

Eli counted to ten, one for each knuckle that wasn’t currently slamming into Dad’s face.

“Whatever,” he ground out. “I’ll see you at home.”

Dad laughed, right in his face, beery and stale. “Yeah, about that. Need the truck keys.”

“No way.” Eli turned his back.

“What the hell?”

“I can drive! No problem.” Tatianna rejoined the conversation. “I guess I should have offered before, Joel, but then I wouldn’t have met your son.” She fired off a grin in Eli’s direction. He didn’t return it.

“You’re too good,” Dad said. “Well, then. It’s past four. We’ll head up to the old Bennet ranch and you can get the lay of the…land.”

Eli surveyed his options. He could call home before they arrived, but he’d better just get there himself. He waited until Dad had shuffled out after Tatianna’s teetering heels—she threw a longing glance over her shoulder at him for good measure—and then stopped by Mr. Phillips’ office.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. Bennets needed to apologize a lot. Few did. “Can I leave early?”

Mr. Phillips blinked. “Something wrong?”

“Just need to—help James out. Ankle’s still pretty bad.”

He sped home the back way, and beat Dad and Tatianna Collins by fifteen minutes.

To his surprise, Mom wasn’t so much taken aback as she was darkly amused. “Leftovers will be good enough for _her_,” she said, leaning back in her wheelchair with a smirk that was almost as impish as Levi’s. “Calm down, Elijah. This will be the most fun we’ve had in a while.”

“She hot?” Levi asked.

“No,” Eli said, shortly.

“Someone google this,” Cody suggested. Levi had already shoved Mark away from the hulking, early-2000s desktop. Phones weren’t always reliable on rural Wi-Fi.

“Goddamn, dialup, we have _crazy_ to investigate.” Levi whacked the monitor. After a couple of minutes, he crowed. “Gotcha! Whoa, this Chris Burgh guy looks like a prick.”

Cody craned his neck. “Is that his real hair?”

“No,” Eli said again, over his shoulder.

“Googling him and the name ‘Collins’,” Levi muttered. “Oh. Former business partner.”

Eli would have laughed, if it wasn’t so terrible. Tatianna must be some relative of the earlier Collins. Classical nepotism.

Wheels ground against gravel outside.

“Shit!” Levi jumped up. “They’re here!”

“Keep it down,” James mumbled, limping after them.

“Lost cause,” Eli said, meaning everything.

Dad flung open the door, shouting that he was home. It only got worse from there. Tatianna Collins, on the merits of a drive-by alone, had great plans for their fields. Once she got the gas companies here, she said, it would be all over. They’d be lining their pockets with money, and Future Governor Burgh might personally visit to do a ribbon cutting.

“What would the grand opening be for?” Mom asked. “The toxic waste dump that will be left over?” But she seemed to be enjoying herself.

Eli wasn’t. Tatianna’s eyes fell on him too often. She was grateful for the warm welcome she’d received from even one family in the town, she assured them, but she also seemed to be harboring hopes that the welcome could turn warmer.

Eli escaped to the kitchen as soon as he could, a mountain of dishes for his excuse.

“Wow,” James said, propping himself against the counter.

“Sit down.”

“Right.”

Eli turned the faucet on full blast. “I’ve never wanted to die more.”

“Why?” Levi had come in. “Dude, she was _totally _checking you out. You should tap that.”

“The lasagna _was _kind of gross,” Cody agreed. “Think she wanted more of a full-course meal.” He and Levi high-fived.

“I will beat the shit out of you,” Eli said, starting towards them.

“_Eli_,” said James, standing up. He pointed at Cody and Levi. “You two, clear out.”

Eli might have thanked him, but then he realized that James was trying not to laugh.

“You’re such a traitor,” Eli said, but he had to bite down on a grin. “This is batshit. Bat-out-of-hell-shit.”

“For what it’s worth, the lasagna wasn’t that gross.”

“Yeah it was.” Eli swiped at his forehead, flecking it with soapsuds. “Seriously. How does Dad manage to sweet-talk an _actual _politician? Or…whatever she is?”

James shrugged. “He…can be OK when he wants to be.”

Eli snorted. “If perpetually bloodshot eyes are your thing.”

James grimaced. “Hopefully this just blows over. She seems like…an outlier. Probably not one of Future Governor Burgh’s most…important people.”

“You got that right.”

“At least Dad didn’t bring home a dancer.”

Eli scrubbed at a hardened tomato spot. James was right about that.

_ii._

The third time her phone buzzed, Darcy stifled a sigh and plucked it off table. Bing hadn’t _said_ no phones at mealtimes, but she’d definitely implied it in one of her Bing-brand rants about the way technology was draining all the joy and sincerity out of people. Darcy shot her an apologetic glance. Bing, ever more patient than her ideals, just smiled and lifted another spoonful of cereal.

_You haven’t been returning my calls._ The same message, sent three times in thirty minutes. Well, that was like Chris Burgh. _Puts the Burg in burgeoning_, Fitz always said. He was a burgeoning candidate for governor, at the moment, though Darcy had high hopes that he wouldn’t go far.

She wouldn’t put it past him to drive upstate, entourage and all, if he didn’t get a response. She texted back, _On vacation. Urgent?_

_Have several campaign events you should attend. Where on vacation?_

_Upstate. _Which, of course, he already knew—but that was as much detail as she would allow him.

_Sending a rep to central NY to scope out prospects this week. Connect with her while there. My records show you’re near Ithaca._

He’d probably put a tracker on her car. Darcy’s lip curled in disgust. In lieu of telling him what exactly he could do with his requests and records, she left him on read and hunted for her running shoes. Let the entourage come.

“You’re going running?” Bing asked, when she came back downstairs. “I feel like such a lump. I know I should come, but I’m…I don’t know.”

Darcy shook her head. “I didn’t expect anyone else to come,” she said. “It’ll clear my head, and I’ll be nicer for the rest of the day.”

Bing laughed. “You’re always nicer than you think, anyway.”

That wasn’t true. Darcy breathed in pine bracken air and ran until her heart was pounding in her ears. Harry had good taste in real estate, at least.

More than that. It was more than that. This was a beautiful house, amid windswept fields and moss-hung forests and rolling hills. There was no reason at all for her to be counting the days.

_It’s not about you. It’s Bing._

She paused, hands on her knees, catching her breath. They just had to get through another week and a few days after that. The ballet would come, and Bing would be in rhapsodies about the sharp-edged spangly beauty of it all, and then they would leave. Leave and never come back, if Darcy had anything to do with it. The ballet was enough for her to dread; she didn’t need further familiarity with this town.

Bing had been different after the Bennets left. Different in a way that Darcy had seen before—jubilant and dreamy one moment, almost tearful the next.

What a way to fall in love.

Darcy slowed to a walk, cooling down. Bing had no business falling in love yet, anyway, but she tended to leap before looking, and love before learning that what she really needed to do was let go.

But time was on Darcy’s side. In a month, if everything went according to plan, Bing would start her post-grad MOMA internship, and forget all about James Bennet and his tattered flannels.

_And you?_

Darcy, she was sure, had nothing to forget. Eli Bennet had been an anomaly. She’d been weak. Probably hormonal. Such things were unavoidable. They didn't need to be externalized.

She climbed the back stairs and showered. It was warm enough outside that a run left her drenched in sweat.

After, with her hair scraped back in a damp bun, she poked at her face in the mirror. It seemed stupid to do eyeliner on a day when she didn’t plan on going anywhere, but she flicked on a coat of mascara, defensively. Her lashes were too blunt and straight without it.

_I guess the vain might as well be honest._

It was unacceptable that Eli’s words had tangled their way into her internal monologue like that. He hadn’t even been talking about—it wasn’t that Darcy cared about how she looked. Not like…it wasn’t—

She turned away from the mirror.

In the hall, she heard sobbing. Yes, definitely sobbing, and definitely coming from Bing’s room.

“Bing?”

A choking, garbled cough. “Sorry. Sorry. Come in.”

Bing was face-down among her pillows.

“What happened?” Darcy’s first thought was James. James Bennet—a monster in the flesh.

“I didn’t get the internship.” Bing lifted a twisted, tear-stained face.

“Oh.” Darcy shifted her murderous intent. “Well, who needs to die?”

“_Me._” Bing groaned. “I kept waiting and waiting and I didn’t get all the paperwork in and I thought I had to the end of this week but now the portal is closed and it’s too _late_.” She hiccuped miserably and disappeared into the pillows again.

Darcy chewed her lip. “Oh.” She sat down and reached out a tentative hand to rub Bing’s shoulder.

“I’m such an _idiot_.”

Bing’s first two years of college had crossed with Darcy’s final two. While Darcy finished law school, Bing was taking a year of travel and exploration. “You’re not. Just…a procrastinator.”

“That’s the worst thing _you_ could ever think of someone!” Bing rolled over, still sniffling. “You’re the one who told me about it, and I was so excited, and then I blew this opportunity, and I just…I’m…”

“Treason would be worse than procrastination,” Darcy said. It had taken her a moment to settle on something. “It’s—it’s not the end of the world.” She mentally rifled through her options. “Listen, Fitz has a lot of friends in the art scene. I’ll call him, and we’ll find something else.”

“Really?” Bing asked, sitting up, but then her face fell again. “Ugh, no. Don’t go out on a limb for me. I don’t _deserve _it.”

“Because you missed the deadline?”

Bing scrubbed at her cheeks with the palm of her hand. “Because I felt…_relieved_.”

Darcy was dumbfounded. “Relieved?”

“Not completely! Like I was also super disappointed and furious at myself and all that but…”

“But what?”

“James,” Bing whispered. Her face took on that soft dreaminess again—the look that always made Darcy feel far, far away. “I’m not done getting to know him.”

They weren’t all bad. People rarely were. Darcy had no doubt that James had his loyalties and loves. But there was so much that Bing couldn’t possibly understand, about the ways the world went wrong.

Bing didn’t belong here.

_You can’t moralize snobbishness to me. No matter how hard you try._

Neither, of course, did Darcy.

“You’ve wanted an internship in New York City for four years,” Darcy reminded her. “There will always be boys around, Bing. Your…right person will still be there. Whoever that is.”

Bing linked her arms around her knees. “You always know just what to say.”

“I really don’t.”

“Don’t worry.” The softness was turned on Darcy now. Bing loved her, too, because of the way she was foolish about all kinds of love. “I’m not, like, _super_ devastated. I’m just emotional. Like I said. It’s complicated, and I’m complicated in a really—stupid way, where I just make bad decisions and don’t know what I want. You always know what you want.”

Darcy said, “I understand,” because she supposed that she should. “I’ll let you know if my friend works out.”

“Fitz’s friend.” Bing’s eyes twinkled. The storm was over; her tears were all but dry.

“I am very well aware,” Darcy said, “That Fitz has more friends than I.”

Because her fatal flaw was hating everyone and everything. Wasn’t it?


	10. struck by the stranger's air

_“All the best part of beauty, a fine countenance, a good figure, and a very pleasing address.”_

_i._

Dawn hadn’t even split the gray sky before Tatianna Collins reemerged. Eli figured that this was what he deserved, writing about the apocalypse and all. Drag too much turmoil and nightmare into word and thought, and eventually it would rise to life.

In other words, Eli’s luck was shit.

Faced with turmoil and nightmare, he waffled between _can I help you_, which implied an offer he didn’t want to make, and _what are you doing here_, which invited an explanation he didn’t want to hear. Before he decided, Tatianna answered for him.

“Good morning!” she announced, grating his nerves into confetti by her smile alone. “Your dad said he had some great tapas of the surrounding area?”

Eli _did _have to stifle a laugh at that. “_Topos_? Like topographic maps?”

She grimaced. “That doesn’t seem right.”

What didn’t seem right, particularly, was lilac suede pumps click-clacking over the kitchen linoleum before Eli had even had a chance to finish making a pot of coffee.

“Your dad _also _said,” Tatianna added, inching closer, “That you’d show me around town today. _You_, specifically.”

Blessedly, James chose that moment to hobble downstairs. He was carefully about putting weight on his bad ankle, with fewer winces resulting. “It’s actually better today,” he said, then caught sight of Tatianna. “Oh—uh. Hi. Is everything OK?”

“I’m here to see your Dad, and Eli, and also you, if you’re willing!” Tatianna chirped. She rested her elbows against the high back of a kitchen chair. “It’s too perfect.”

“What is?” James lifted a few mugs down from the cupboard.

“Future Governor Burgh is always looking for narratives,” Tatianna explained. “And a family in a rundown farmhouse—no offense—that’s struggling to make ends meet and has this great opportunity come their way? That is a _narrative_.”

Eli gave up on the coffee. He reached for the truck keys.

James lifted his eyebrows, a question.

“Work,” Eli said shortly. He didn’t have to be in until noon. It was just past eight; Levi had caught the bus to school; Cody and Mark were still fast asleep.

Tatianna didn’t need to know Eli’s true schedule.

“OK.” James spoke just slowly enough that Eli remembered. James had to work today, too. And if Eli took the truck now—

“I’ll walk,” Eli said. He switched out the car keys for an apple.

“I’ll come with you,” Tatianna proposed. She had been examining her nails during this interlude, unperturbed by just how much she had intruded on someone else’s life and kitchen and morning coffee.

“It’s a long way.” Eli shook his head, glancing at her shoes.

“I’ll drive you.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.” Eli pointed upwards. “That’s Dad, waking up.” This was a patent lie, but he just needed to get outside, away from _her_.

Tatianna paused, and in the pause, Eli grabbed his wallet and his boots and slanted an apologetic glance at James. James smiled wordlessly and turned back to the coffee pot.

It was as good a morning as any to hate himself, Eli decided, when he shut the door behind him. Tatianna’s chatter about eminent domain and oil wells still drummed at the corners of his mind, but guilt took center stage. It was selfish of him, leaving James alone to manage yet another crisis.

At least James could deflect, he reasoned, when he was a hundred yards of fine gravel dust away from the house. The fields on either side of him were shivering in the breeze. There was timothy grass rising above the clover. The sunlight that pressed against his eyelids. The day would be hot, and that made walking a sacrifice, didn’t it? At least as much as an escape.

When Eli was ten, they had a billboard in the front yard. Dad got five thousand dollars for advertising mint toothpaste. The company went out of business the next year, probably because they paid for billboards in overgrown farm fields that no one passed unless they were lost.

They’d promised Dad ten thousand, anyway.

The billboard was home plate for baseball and the favored fort in capture the flag. It was still here, after all this time, peeling in strips of red and white and pale green.

Mom hated it.

If Tatianna Collins had her money where her very talkative mouth was—and that was a big _if_—Eli wondered why Mom didn’t seem more worried about that.

Eminent domain plowing up their house and land was worse than any billboard, surely.

_Unless that’s what she wants._

Eli bit down on the thought. Tatianna would flit around for a while and then be gone. There’d be no sudden changes. The ancient house would continue its slow descent into the earth.

So, perhaps, would the Bennets.

He was no more than a mile down the road by now. That left two more until Meryton. The purr of an engine, still far off, caught his ear. At last it slowed beside him, and Eli, dread knotting in his throat, saw the sleek lines of the only Bentley in the surrounding county.

Darcy rolled down the window.

“Eli?”

He nodded in perfunctory greeting. The sweat on his forehead and neck, dampening his hair and shirt, hadn’t mattered a moment before.

“It's warm out.” Darcy drummed slim fingers against the wheel. It was hard to tell, with her, where pensiveness ended and impatience began.

“Summer,” Eli agreed, bluntly. “Known for that.”

It wasn’t summer yet, technically. He half expected her to call him out on it. She lifted her mirrored sunglasses instead, and squinted at him. “Get in. I’ll drive you to town.”

It would mean saving two miles and losing his pride. Not a hard call. “Thanks,” Eli said, turning the dial on his smile all the way up to _mocking_. “I'm good.”

She looked confused, then annoyed, and then all expression was chiseled neatly away into implacable granite. “Why not?”

“Nice car. Dirty boots.” _Don't need your charity._

She lowered her glasses again. “Suit yourself.”

He blinked away the cloud of dust that trailed her into the distance, thoroughly pissed. These past weeks, too many eyes had been on him. It was as if his life had suddenly opened up for strangers’ inquiries and interest.

Eli hated that.

Not because it was a life to be proud of—quite the opposite. It was better that nobody came too close, to see the ugliness of it, writ large in beaten roads and water-stained ceilings, old linoleum and bottle-lined windowsills.

At the garage, he took some comfort in the cement-cooled shade. By noon, the sun would have shafted all the way to the back wall, and he’d be baking in the heat. It was a good thing he’d come in early.

At noon, too, James would be here. Eli hoped that James had escaped Tatianna’s clutches. It would relieve that nagging guilt. Then again, James didn’t seem to be the object of Tatianna’s smoldering glances.

Late in the morning, Cody and Levi trooped in, Mark trailing behind them.

Eli dropped a wrench. “Aren’t you supposed to be in school?” This, to Levi.

Levi just shrugged. It was the end of his junior year, but senioritis had set in early. “Slow day.”

Eli rolled his eyes. “Why are you all here?”

“Escaping that politics harpy,” Cody explained. “Dude, she’s the worst. She keeps asking about you and she’ll probably find her way here soon enough, but we gave her the slip for a minute.”

“Thanks for the warning.” Eli plucked a can of washers out of Mark’s hands. “Stop. I don’t need all of you poking around.”

“Like we’re not going to work here too someday,” Levi protested.

“Are you? Phillips is hiring.”

Nobody answered this. Two brothers with income was enough to keep them happy, apparently. Eli turned away.

Cody was flat against the open doorjamb, neck craned outward. “Oh, shit!” he exclaimed. “She’s coming!”

“Run!” Levi hissed, making for the back entrance.

Eli glanced at the clock. It was practically noon. He could take lunch now and maybe that would keep Tatianna off his trail. What the hell did she _want_, anyway? Of course, she had had to take an interest in _him_.

Feeling far too conspiratorial for his age, he dashed after the others. He got his comeuppance immediately; his brothers rounded the back of the garage and headed for a cross-street that Eli knew too well.

“Hold up. Where are we going?”

“Where d’you think?” Levi cast him a wolfish grin.

The theater.

Its façade, still blue and gold and grand enough, faced the main drag. But the cross-street led to the opposite side, where unvarnished bricks loomed over a paved parking lot. In season, dancers gathered around the heavy door to smoke and gossip between rehearsals.

All of this was more than Eli needed to know, but being a Bennet meant unrelenting access to the ins and outs of the ballet.

Two or three girls were grouped around the door, and Levi and Cody made a beeline for them. Mark had disappeared somewhere along the way.

Petal-pale leotards and shapely ankles were all very well and good, or so his family had always thought, but Eli was cursed with the good sense to be embarrassed.

“Narrow escape,” Levi boasted to one of the dancers. She was tall, with dark skin and a bouquet of tight curls wrapped high atop her head.

Eli recognized her.

“Narrow escape from what?” she asked, and then, “Hey, Eli.”

“Hey, Denny.”

Levi, who already had his arm slung over another girl’s shoulder, started the absurd saga of Tatianna Collins. He had inherited Dad’s knack for storytelling, though the charm of _that_ had long been lost on Eli.

“You've got to meet our new swan,” Denny told Eli. “Well, she would be a swan if the rest of us had our way, but Kahlen and Alana got the parts, _again_.”

Eli wasn’t trying to meet anybody, but he made no move to stop Denny from leaning through the door and calling, “Gem! Get out here.”

Eli saw her hand first, pushing the heavy door further ajar, clutching a pack of Marlboros.  
He thought he'd made up his mind, but wideset, bluebell eyes assured him he hadn’t.

“Shit, Denny,” said the owner of the eyes. “This one’s hot.”

Eli raised an eyebrow. “I’m right here.”

“Shit, new guy. You’re hot.” Her eyes twinkled. “And yes, I'm just as much of an asshole as you’re thinking right now.” She flipped the Marlboros into her left hand and held out her right. “Gemma Wickham.”

“Eli Bennet. I thought dancers shouldn’t smoke.”

“We do a lot we shouldn’t.” She plucked out a cigarette. “Want one?”

“God, yes,” Levi said, coming up beside them.

Eli smacked the side of his head. “No.”

“Brothers.” Gemma grinned. “Cute.” She sucked the cigarette and lit it. “So. Fans of the ballet?”

“Superfans,” Levi said.

“We’ll leave you alone,” Eli promised, reaching for Levi’s collar. Levi ducked out of reach.

“Don’t,” Gemma said, nipping her lower lip. “Ask any of us. Ask Denny—she’s the sane one. We’re bored as hell, in between rehearsing. And drills. God! Drills.”

Eli thought she looked a little hungry, knew he was a little hungry, liked that _want_ and _need_ might fit together better than most, here.

“How long have you been with the company?”

“Six months.”

“She’s brilliant,” Denny put in. “Great form.”

“Don’t listen to her.” Gemma’s lipstick had left a rosy ring on the filter. When she held it out, Eli gave in. He took a long drag.

It had been a while since his teenage attempts, but he didn’t cough. He wasn’t Levi, who turned green on every inhale.

Cody whistled. “Nice, Eli. Always giving us shit for stuff like this.”

“Responsible.” Gemma laughed. “I like it. Tell me all about yourselves, Bennets.”

Levi and Cody obliged, too eagerly, but Eli felt all the warm gratification that Gemma’s gaze, more frequently directed towards him than any of the others, could give.

If it was hypocritical of him to be here, he didn’t care for the sake of a few moments of freedom. James had texted him that Tatianna had returned to the house, disgruntled and planning to stay for dinner.

So, dammit—couldn’t Eli have a little fun?

“There’s five of you?” Gemma was asking now, since Levi had gotten around to a description of family dynamics. “Goddamn.”

“I’m one of seven, remember?” Denny rolled her eyes. “Spare us your only-child shock.”

Gemma fiddled with the stud at the top of her ear. “I’ve always envied big families, actually. Less lonely.”

“Not always,” Eli felt compelled to say. Her answering smile was less cunning than before; he thought he glimpsed camaraderie.

He wanted more.

“Eli?”

He hadn’t expected to hear Bing’s voice here. She didn’t belong—and not because Bing was any enemy of belonging. Eli was suddenly conscious of the cigarette in his hand. Disgusting habit. He’d always hated it when Dad—

Bing, turning down the street, was with Darcy. She wore a patchwork skirt and a blouse the color of the sky. Darcy, in dark jeans that probably cost more than a car, was incongruous as always.

“I’m so sorry to interrupt,” Bing exclaimed, realizing that she _was_ interrupting. “I just have this compulsion of saying hi to everyone I know, whenever I see them. It’s a terrible habit. Compulsion, whatever.”

“It’s fine.” Eli grinned at her. “Hey, Bing.”

Levi and Cody greeted her as well. Gemma and Denny and the other dancers lifted a hand.

Eli didn’t know which he saw first—Gemma looking at Darcy or Darcy looking at Gemma. Whichever it was, it froze the air around them.

Darcy’s shoulders rolled back as though she was absorbing a blow or striking one. There was no time to be sure, because the next moment she had turned on her heel and walked away.

Bing, caught in between, gaped a bit. Then she grimaced, eyes seeking out Eli’s—maybe for comfort?—and said, “Nice to see you all. Bye!’

Eli tapped away a bud of ash, not sure if looking at Gemma was the right thing to do. When he did, he thought her cheeks had a little color. But nobody else seemed to have noticed what he had.

He _had _seen it. No trick of his imagination.

His eyes met Gemma’s. She lifted a shoulder and reached for the cigarette.

Eli liked her.

_ii._

_“Hey, Darcy. Hey. You’re not breathing.”_

Sixteen years ago. There had been a pounding in her temples, eardrums held as tight as a grudge.

_“Darcy?”_

_“I’m fine. I’m just seeing how long I can do it.”_ This, huffed out, red-faced and frustrated.

Holding one’s breath required concentration, and it had to be done alone.

“Darcy? Darcy, are you breathing?”

“I’m fine.” She could barely feel her fingers. “I’m fine, Bing. My stomach is just like—off. Too much of Harry’s fine cheese or whatever.”

“You’ve barely been eating,” Bing said. It almost sounded accusing—Bing was usually so careful about how she broached the subject of food—but maybe there was no accusation at all, just the same refrain rattling in Darcy’s head.

“I’ll just lie down when we get back to the house.”

“Darcy…” Bing’s lips and brows were all pinched tight.

_Control. Get control._ It was her own fault for being so visibly upset. Of course Bing had questions. “You must be excited for the ballet.” _Shit. Why bring that up?_

“I am.” Bing always answered a question posed to her, but that wasn’t enough to distract her today. “It was that girl, wasn’t it? Did you know her? You never…”

And no, Darcy had never said. Had left certain chapters utterly closed from Bing’s bright eyes and smiles. Eating disorder, therapy, substance issues, therapy.

Old friendships, therapy. Darcy hadn’t expected—hadn’t let herself expect—that these two worlds might collide.

The reverberations rattled through every nerve. “I do know her,” Darcy said. The words tasted bitter. “I knew her a long time ago, and….” Darcy hated to beg. “Do you mind if we don’t talk more about it?”

Bing did mind, of course, but she would have minded hurting Darcy more. “No, no. I just—I hate to see you—_Darcy_. I wish there was something I could do.”

Heat and bile were climbing the back of her throat. “Change the subject?”

“OK.” Bing set her jaw confidently. Then she squeaked and buried her face in her hands. “Oh _no_!”

“What?” Something about the sudden shift settled Darcy’s stomach a little. She felt her eyebrow twitch up as though everything was normal again. “What’s the matter?”

“Harry is having a party.” Bing’s voice was muffled by her fingers. “Normally the Lucases do it—”

“Do what?”

“Have a party after the ballet. Like this big reception thing. And Harry really wanted to take it over because…well, because he…I don’t know. He likes the attention. Ugh, that’s so mean of me. I helped. I totally pushed him to it because the Bennets wanted…ugh, Darcy, I’m so sorry.”

And down the rollercoaster they went again. Darcy swallowed hard. It was bad enough, to come upon Eli Bennet, who had a tendency to make her heart too open…and then, Gemma, who was a good part of the reason it was closed up.

Now Harry and Bing, overly sociable as they were, would fling open the doors of her only sanctuary.

But it wasn’t her house. “Bing, it’s fine. Though—” a pause—“I have no idea how Harry’s going to magically finish renovating in a week, _and_ plan something massive.”

“Harry has the money,” Bing said, like that explained everything—and it pretty much did. “He wants to make a splash. But I’ll—I’ll tell him we should cancel.”

“No.” Darcy shook her head. “No, Bing. Of course not. Everything is fine. Sometimes we have bad days. You were—crying, like, _yesterday_.”

“That’s me.” Bing waved a hand. “I cry all the time. You’re—stoic. Or stately. Or both.”

_Stunted, emotionally_. “Then trust my stoicism to recover itself.” They were back at Harry’s place now, mercifully. Darcy glanced towards the inviting woods. She’d go for a run, maybe, and sweat this out of her system.

First, though, she emptied out her breakfast in the upstairs bathroom, washed her face, and brushed the vomit out of her teeth.

Cal met her coming downstairs, and didn’t seem to notice anything amiss.

“Barely seen you all day,” he said, putting his hand close to hers on the banister.

“Bing and I were in town.”

“Yeah, she said.”

Darcy wondered how much Bing had said. She chewed her lip, wondering what the quickest way to leave was. Cal would talk forever. Cal would propose on the spot, if he thought he had half a chance.

“I’m going for a run,” Darcy said briefly. Without further explanation to Cal, she climbed the stairs again and hunted for her track shorts.

Her hands were shaking. The shamefulness of that alone was almost enough to upend her nearly empty stomach again.

Outside the backdoor of the house, there was a footpath into the woods. It was rusty with pine needles. Harry, during the first-day tour, had explained that it connected to an old logging road.

“You could log this place again,” Cal had speculated, but Harry had shaken his head in rare disagreement.

“No way, man. _Ambiance_.”

Darcy was not thinking of ambiance as she ran. She was welcoming the sting in her tense muscles. She would go back the way she came; it would not be _out_-running.

The forest swarmed uphill. At the crest of the hill, the road hemmed in the trees. Darcy got her bearings. If she continued along the road, the trees would thin out, giving her a view of the Netherfield house.

It would also bring her closer to the Bennets.

The breeze shivered along her sweat-dampened spine. Darcy swiped at her forehead with the back of her hand and ran back through the woods.

These were old pines, thick-boughed and studded with amber knots of sap. Darcy swiped the toe of her sneaker through the needles at the end of the logging road and reached for her phone.

It would be so easy to call Fitz, and even easier not to.

Darcy dialed.

Fitz picked up on the second ring. “Darcy? I'm honored.”

She listened for a beat. “Are you making popcorn? For lunch?”

“Guilty as charged.”

Darcy leaned into the sound of his voice, but found she wasn’t quite equal to speaking herself.

Of course, that just made Fitz worried. “What's going on?”

“How’s George?” Darcy asked. Playing, always, for time.

“George is…fine. Having a kegger tonight. Obviously.” She could just _see_ Fitz’s eyes sparking with mischief.

“_Fitz_.”

“Kidding.” The sound of popcorn subsided. “Little guy is just—buried in books, you’ll be pleased to know. I’m making sure he gets sufficient protein. And popcorn. It’s a delicate balance. Evening it out with Ichiran ramen.”

“Thanks.” Sometimes guilt and grief were two opposite edges of the same blade. “Well, I should be going.”

“Darcy.” Fitz could see through her even when he wasn’t there. “Why did you really call?”

There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Through the treetops, the blue of it almost glowed. “Ran into the past today. Felt like a brick wall.”

His tone changed at once. “Whoa. Does that—you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit. How—never mind the how. She always—shit.”

“She _looked_ surprised.” The tendons in Darcy’s neck were drawing tighter by the minute. “I mean, I thought so. Maybe it was just a coincidence.” And if it was, that was only further proof that the world was cruel.

“You don’t have to be worried about us,” Fitz said firmly. “All is well here. Take care of yourself, yeah?”

It didn’t matter, Darcy realized, if it was sheer chance. The rules had changed as soon as they’d seen each other. “I’ll try. Thanks.” She cleared her throat. “I really should go.”

“We barely talked,” Fitz said, and sighed.

Darcy smiled. Fitz couldn’t see it, which was for the best. “I know.”


	11. the very cold manner of a meeting

_“A thorough, determined dislike of me—a dislike which I cannot but attribute to some measure of jealousy.”_

_i._

Even Mom stopped finding Tatianna Collins funny by the middle of another dinner.

Only Dad kept up his lynx-eyed interest. “How soon,” he asked, “D’you expect to hear back from the…subsidizers?” The last word was said a little uncertainly. Eli smirked bitterly at his plate.

“I promise you, I will be in touch. I will. Two days isn’t much time, but I think I’ve—I think I’ve seen what there is to see. I will let you know as soon as we’ve got a deal.”

“And by a deal,” Mom cut in, “You mean demolishing our house and carving up our land, don’t you?”

“Maggie,” Dad growled, but Mom was not afraid of Dad.

“Careful you don’t change color at the thought of all that green, _Joel_.”

Tatianna, constitutionally incapable of reading a room, said, “I also will have some news for _you_.” When Eli didn’t look at her, she added, “_Eli_. But I’m not going to tell it…yet.”

Levi practically choked on a mouthful of food.

Eli escaped to the kitchen, starting on the dishes before the table was even cleared. James trailed after him, still cautious of his bad ankle.

“I’m going out,” Eli said.

“Is it that Gemma girl?” James asked, in an undertone. The walls were sometimes too thin.

Eli grinned, momentarily forgetting the horrors of the Collins. “Yeah, actually. We’re grabbing a drink.”

James blinked.

“Is this where, if you were not the nicest person in the world, you would accuse me of being hypocritical?” Eli flipped the dish towel over his shoulder. “I know. I always tell you that you’re the one moving too fast.”

“Nah.” James chuckled. “Just glad you’re going to have a good time. I won’t wait up.”

“Didn’t say I was moving _that_ fast.” Eli pretended to be shocked. “I’ve got to keep up my reputation and shit.”

“More like, our reputation _is_ shit.”

“Hmm.” It wasn’t like James to sound gloomy. “What’s the matter?” Other than the obvious, of course.

James chewed his lip, shifting a stack of plates from dishrack to cupboard. “Nothing, actually. I’m just—Bing is coming over tonight.”

“And you’ve realized that that’s a colossally bad idea?” Eli saw James deflate further and softened. “I mean, not _Bing_. Not _you_. Just…everything else.”

“I thought we’d go for a walk.”

“Except you can’t really walk?”

James sighed. “Except that.”

Eli considered. Then he swallowed down the selfishness that he’d given free rein to the morning before. “I’ll stay here and run interference, if you want.”

James shook his head. “We’ll be fine,” he said, and his face brightened. Eli knew he trusted James’ shows of good humor more than he should. “She’s really great, you know? And I want her to meet Mom. At some point. Not like…” He fumbled for the words. “Not like meeting the parents. Just…”

“Mom would like her,” Eli agreed. There was nothing to dislike about Bing.

The dishes were done and Tatianna’s voice floated dangerously near. As they well knew, the Bennet kitchen wasn’t beneath her notice. Eli snatched the truck keys off the hook and said, “Text me if you need me.”

And then he was free.

There were three bars in Meryton. Eli had known them forever. When Gemma had texted him, having gotten his number through some circuitous route involving Denny and probably Levi or Cody, Eli had suggested that they go to Water Street, which was the only place from which Dad was permanently banned.

It was a warm night. Eli saw Gemma waiting by the door, under a yellow-filmed halogen lamp, her bare shoulders the same gold as her hair. She lifted a hand.

“Hey. I’m waiting for some guy, but he’s taking forever. You want to buy me a drink instead?”

“His loss,” Eli said smoothly, pushing open the door. They’d replaced the tiled windows after Dad had smashed three panes with his elbow. “Bet he would’ve been a bore.”

“I think he sells himself short,” Gemma said. She slipped onto a barstool and propped her chin on her hands.

Eli sat down beside her, and nodded to the bartender. “Hey, Jerry.”

Jerry nodded back. Friendly enough, still. Jerry wasn’t a believer in visiting the sins of fathers on their more responsible sons. Especially when said responsible son had paid for the windows.

“Alright,” Gemma mused, looking at him with eyes that were greener in dim light. “I feel like you’re going to judge me for what drink I order.”

“I don’t care what people drink,” Eli said. “Just how much.” He realized, belatedly, that that sounded kind of harsh. “I just mean…”

“No, no, that’s cool.” Gemma smiled at him, which meant, he hoped, that she wasn’t offended. “Nobody wants to end up with puke in their lap. Especially if it’s somebody else’s.”

“Gross.”

“You caught me.” She beckoned Jerry over. “I’m gross.”

“Hardly.”

“I’ll have an IPA.”

“Hard cider,” Eli said. He didn’t care for beer.

“Cider?” Gemma giggled. “Jesus, you’re so innocent, after all. You have to tell me—did you almost wear a button-up shirt here?”

“No,” Eli said, which was a lie. “And I see very clearly that this is a trap. Now I’m supposed to try and convince you of my wild side, aren’t I?”

“Actually.” Gemma slid a hand across the bar, so that her glossy nails nudged up against his wrist. A light touch. Eli felt it on every inch of his skin. “I want you to tell me everything you tell the world, and a little bit extra.”

“I don’t tell the world very much,” Eli said.

“Great. So give me a little extra.”

There was so much on his mind that shouldn’t be said—everything that existed in the embarrassing sphere of _family shit_, the boredom and imperfections of Meryton life. Finally, he offered, “I want to be an English teacher.”

Gemma tipped her head back in a giddy burst of triumph, so that Eli’s gaze could very easily descend along the clean line of her throat. “I knew it!” she burst out. “I bet Denny—well, it doesn’t matter how much—that you were totally going to be a hot professor one day.”

“That’s the second time you’ve called me hot. Or maybe even the third.”

“Eli.” She rolled her eyes, unabashed. “I asked you out for a drink. Of course I’m going to flirt with you.”

He felt his face warm up, and hoped she couldn’t tell. “So far, you’ve gently mocked my choice of beverage and near-choice of clothing, so. A bold strategy.”

“Near-choice! Aha. So the button-up _was_ on the table.” Gemma bit her smile down into something softer and more serious. “Really, though. I know what you must think. I get it. The whole…dancer, one-night-only thing. Tinder without the app. But I swear to you, it’s more than that. I don’t believe in passing people by, when I see someone I want to get to know.”

“I don’t mind.” He really didn’t. “I felt the same way.”

“You did?” Her eyes sparkled. If it was a trick of the lights, Eli wouldn’t admit it. Surely he was entitled to a flight of fancy, a poem of motion and moment. “Even when…” She paused. “Never mind.”

“What?” The memory of Darcy’s stony calm flashed across Eli’s mind. He had a feeling Gemma was thinking of her, too.

Eli was many things. Deeply curious was one of them.

Gemma sipped her beer. “I don’t know you well enough yet to tell you.”

Eli looked down at his cider, half-empty. “Do you want to get out of here?” When her eyebrows flicked up, he amended, “To take a walk, I mean.”

Maybe he was old-fashioned, qualifying like that. Gemma reached for her purse.

They wandered to Main Street, which was ghostly quiet. Meryton could barely keep up a steady stream of traffic at midday, except for the wild weeks of ballet season. And though the dancers were here, performances didn’t start for another week. It was _their _rehearsal, after all. Only Meryton insisted on turning it into a festival.

It was easier to talk when there wasn’t anyone else around. That was a lesson learned from two-plus decades in the Bennet house, for Eli, but Gemma seemed to feel the same way. He told her about his work, which he hated, and his writing, which he still loved. She talked about dancing and traveling and told him he’d make a good _ballerino_. Eli didn’t care for tights, but he wouldn’t mind taking her in his arms.

He did not say that.

They had almost walked all the way out of town when Gemma stopped. There was a bench at the end of the sidewalk; some long-ago mayor had tried to start a beautification project. It had died out, like all things did in Meryton.

“Want to sit down?” Gemma asked.

Eli nodded.

He rested one arm along the backrest, and she turned sideways, with her toes poking into his leg and her arms slung round her knees. It was almost dark, but he could see her, still. She was too far away to kiss. Eli thought that was probably for the best.

“Can I tell you the thing?”

“Do you know me well enough now?”

“I’ve known you since I first met you,” Gemma told him, her voice dropping a little lower. “Hot professor, remember?”

“Right.” Eli laughed softly.

“I just needed to find the right words,” Gemma said. Then, abruptly, “Are you…friends with Darcy Williams?”

He’d been expecting Darcy’s name to turn up eventually, but the question still threw him. “No,” he said. “She showed up here a couple weeks ago, my brother’s got…well, he’s got a thing for her friend, and we keep running into them.” He paused. “If I ever see her again, it’ll be too soon.” That should drive the point home.

“Cool,” Gemma said. “Ok, well. I’m about to take a huge risk and tell you a whole saga of woe. If you want to hear it.”

She smelled like…jasmine. Eli was pretty sure it was jasmine. “I want to hear it.”

“I have to tell someone,” Gemma said quietly, “Or I think I’ll lose my mind.”

“So you know her.”

“Yeah, I know her.” She shifted her legs so that she was closer to him, knees tucked against his thigh now, one elbow on the back of the bench. He moved his arm to accommodate her.

“Our moms were best friends,” Gemma said. She talked fast, but not flat. Eli loved things that seemed to have a life of their own; a rush and current. Her voice was one of those things. “Her mom came over from Korea and was totally lost. Barely spoke English. My mom was a waitress at the diner under Cynthia’s apartment. That’s Darcy’s mom’s name. I mean, before that it was something else, something Korean. But yeah.” She bit her lip. “Cynthia loved my mom so much, because my mom was all she had. No, that’s too hard on my mom. And she didn’t get anything out of it, you know? Helping someone who didn’t seem to be going anywhere but down?”

“Yeah,” Eli said. “I know.”

“So, they were friends, and they went to community college together. But this was in Massachusetts, see? And like, on weekends all the rich kids would go up there, and there was one guy, super-hot or something, named Ken, _obviously_—”

“Obviously.”

“I’m going to rush through this part. Ken was going to NYU for law school but his, family lived up in Cape Cod. He met Cynthia and my mom and I’m pretty sure he actually went on a date with my mom but then he met Cynthia and it was all over. You don’t have to speak the same language very well if you’re pretty, I guess. And she was pretty.”

So was Darcy, but Eli didn’t like the thought himself and he certainly wasn’t going to say it out loud.

“They got married. And Ken would have paid for Cynthia to go to college, but she didn’t want to. She wanted to be a mom. That almost didn’t work out.”

“Are you and Darcy the same age?”

“No. I’m five years older than her.” Gemma ran a hand through her hair. Eli was surprised—that made her twenty-nine? Or thirty? He’d thought she was the same age as he was. “My mom did not get married, though. She just…had me. And maybe some people would have been bitter, but Cynthia wasn’t. She loved me. Like, loved me so much. Better than my mom could, sometimes.” She sighed. “So anyway, wow, I am in too deep to be embarrassed, let’s keep going. Cynthia was amazing, and then finally she had Darcy, and we were like sisters. For a while.”

It was hard to imagine, but Eli tried. After all, Darcy was a kid once, even if she barely seemed human now.

“I loved her. You don’t get over that. And they were like family…and then…”

“Then?”

“Darcy’s parents died in a plane crash. I always feel like everyone _knows_ that, like it’s a fact that exists everywhere. But of course, I don’t see why you would know. It was a small plane, private. Not like an airliner. Not something the world would remember.”

“How old was she?”

“Fifteen. It messed her up, of course. I don’t hold that against her. I’m sure it still does.” Gemma fell silent for a moment, then shot him another glance. “You ever seen her knock back a scotch or three? That was a daily occurrence for years. Maybe it still is.”

“Yeah.” Weirdly, admitting that felt like a betrayal. He pushed any sense of guilt away. The story wasn’t over yet.

“I was nineteen, and I had almost no money. Darcy’s mom left me a little bit of money, but her main gift…well, this is the point of this super-long story. Darcy’s mom set up a fund for me. I wanted to go to law school. So did Darcy. And of course, _she_ did.” Gemma blew out her breath, like this part of the telling was hard. “We were both supposed to go to NYU, and I was helping my mom out a lot, so college took forever. We ended up evening out, me and Darcy. We would have started law school at the same time.”

“But you’re not a lawyer,” Eli said, carefully.

“Nope.” Gemma blinked up at the blue dusk. “Darcy made sure of that. She went to admissions and the scholarship committee and told them every bad thing I’d ever done and a whole lot of worse things I hadn’t.” She turned an anguished gaze to Eli. “Affairs with my college professors. Drugs. Crazy shit like that.”

“And they _believed _her?”

“There’s a building there named after her dad,” Gemma said, and now her voice had fallen flat at last, like she was tired or sad or just sick of caring. “I don’t even know who mine _is_. You see the problem.”

Eli did see the problem. It looked like Darcy, cold and unyielding and…much _crueler_ than he would ever have dreamed. “That’s messed up,” he said, which was putting it lightly. “Why the hell would she _do _it?”

“Jealousy,” Gemma said. “And maybe a complicated mixture of feelings that weren’t _all _bad. She missed her parents a lot. Maybe she to keep everything for herself. But mostly…I mean, she just hated me. She always did, even when we were little. I couldn’t always see it. I didn’t want to.”

“Psychopath at law,” Eli said dryly, still reeling. “So, you couldn’t take it to the Bar?”

“I couldn’t hurt her like she’d hurt me.” Gemma turned again, this time leaning back against his arm so that her hair spilled over _his_ shoulder. “Cynthia, I guess. It all comes down to Cynthia, and her memory, even if it that was all I could save.”

“You’re a better person than I am.” Eli clenched his hand on his knee.

“I doubt that.” This time, her sigh was a little shuddery, a little uneven. “There. I’ve done my worst. Spilled my tragic guts. Made a shitshow of flirting, haven’t I?”

“I don’t care about flirting,” Eli said. “Thanks for trusting me. It can’t be easy, running into that.”

“That’s why I had to tell someone.” Gemma shrugged. “Couldn’t tell Denny or the other girls. It’d get around. Couldn’t…I just looked for the first friendly face. Yours is a good one.”

“My face appreciates that,” Eli assured her. “Are you alright?”

“Oh,” Gemma murmured, leaning conspiratorially forward so that, darkness or not, he could see every curve and dent of her lips, “I’m doing just fine. I wanted law, but dance has always had my heart, too.”

“Then I’ll see you opening night.” Eli reminded himself not to kiss her. It would be—taking advantage, since she was clearly going through a lot. “And you should be flattered, because I usually don’t give a damn about the performing arts.”

“Oh, bullshit. That’s not true.”

“No, it’s not. But I’ll give a very particular damn this time.”

“It’s a deal,” she said, standing up and offering him her hand. He took it, as though he needed it. “And please don’t worry about me. We’ll be good friends now, since I’ve taken you through my personal hell on our first…hang.”

They walked back towards the theater, hands brushing against each other.

“So,” Gemma said. “Your brother’s into Darcy’s friend?”

“Bing? Yeah.” Eli rubbed the back of his neck. “Honestly, she’s the polar opposite of Darcy. I think.”

“She seemed sweet. I’m glad for your brother.”

“Nicest girl ever, in his opinion.” Eli grinned. “That title’s still open, in my book.”

“Is it?” The streetlights above showed him that she was grinning too.

Eli left that question coyly unanswered. Something else was eating at him. “Doesn’t Darcy have a brother?”

Gemma nodded. “George. He’s a lot younger than her. Total sweetheart, or used to be. The last time I saw him…” She lifted a shoulder. “He was a lot like she is now.”

“Money does that to you.”

“Not to everyone, I hope.”

“Who can say?” Gemma shook her head, sending her bright hair flying. “She can be very charming when she wants to be, you know. I’m just glad to be free, remembering Cynthia with love. I just leave the rest to the universe.”

They were in front of the theater again. Eli said, “Where should I leave you?”

“I wish you wouldn’t,” Gemma whispered. She reached up, one hand ghosting lightly against his cheek. “But I guess we should take some things slow, shouldn’t we?”

Eli kissed her cheek. “I guess.”

Gemma turned away from him reluctantly. “I’m staying next door,” she said. “You know, when it’s the right time. Good night, Eli.”

And then she was off, a shimmer of light when she opened the stairwell door, soft darkness again when she shut it behind her.

Eli realized that he’d been holding his breath.

_ii._

Bing had disappeared. Darcy had a suspicion—more than a suspicion—of where she’d gone, and might have caught her in the act of leaving if she’d been paying attention.

Darcy, for the last twenty-four hours, hadn’t been paying much attention.

She dragged her knuckles along the edge of her jaw, tracking the coiled ache that had settled there, and tried to focus. _Count the days until the performance, then count the days until leaving_. She could do this.

She ate dinner alone, cobbled together from leftovers. Her hosts would have been horrified, but Harry was preoccupied with coordinating the party spectacle, and Nina, for once, wasn’t far behind. Maybe this was what had brought them together; harebrained schemes of asserting social dominance.

God, she was tired.

She washed her plate and thought of having a drink, then thought better of it. It shouldn’t be a daily thing. There would always be an edge to take off; sometimes, it might be best to leave it sharp.

Cello music floated down the hallway. With it, incongruously, came Cal.

“Harry’s hiring a goddamn symphony,” he pronounced gloomily. “What’s gotten into him?”

Darcy shrugged. The idea that she would understand Harry better than Cal was almost as preposterous as the idea that she would want to. “He and Bing seem to think it’s a good idea.” She meant, _the party_. She meant, _opening the doors_.

No matter what came through.

“Waste of money and booze.” Cal shook his head. “I don’t know who he thinks is worth impressing here.”

Darcy, who had spent too many occasions in the last twenty-five years in the company of Chris Burgh, had a thought or two on the subject of performative masculinity. She said nothing, but reconsidered the drink.

“Where’s my sister?”

“Out.”

“Not together?” Cal lifted an eyebrow. “You know, I’ve always wondered how…”

“How what?” Darcy’s shoulder blades jutted a little more stiffly. “How our friendship works?”

He reddened. “Actually, yeah.”

Cal moved in a world that necessarily centered around himself. He counted people as those who were like him, and those who were not. The latter, he dismissed out of hand, or pursued, like he was always pursuing Darcy—relentlessly and without imagination.

How _did_ two people become friends? Bing, all light; Darcy, all shadow. She would not explain this to Cal. Without warning or permission, she thought of Eli and James, who hadn’t chosen each other initially, and yet continued to do so, in the contradiction of family.

“Your sister,” Darcy said, “Is very kind.”

As usual, the conversation only ended when she walked away. The front door was opening—to let the cellist out, but also to let Bing in.

Bing slipped around the elephantine cello case and stopped short, seeing Darcy.

“Oh, shit.” Bing even grimaced sweetly. “Hi.”

“Where have you been?” It came out accusatory, and Darcy cursed inwardly.

“Uh…”

With James. Of course. It was the only reason that Bing would have left without telling her where she was going, _snuck away_—

Bing didn’t hide much. Darcy felt momentarily betrayed, and then reminded herself, by force of will and long-standing, self-flagellating habit, that Bing owed her nothing. Nobody did.

“It’s fine,” Darcy said, following her into the sitting room.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Bing assured her, still with little bits of joy and hope winking like sparkles at the corners of her eyes. “I just—it was kind of spontaneous? And I didn’t want to make it into something it wasn’t.” She sank down on the sofa, lifted a throw pillow, and cradled it in her arms. “We just sat on this old bench behind his house? It was…I haven’t seen sunsets like this since we moved to Boston. Everything is a thousand times more vibrant here. Did you watch the sunset, Darcy?”

“No.”

“Tomorrow,” Bing said dreamily. “Tomorrow we’ll watch it together. Darcy, I really think you’d like him. He just—I know he thinks he’s not that smart, but that’s just because Eli’s the writer, you know?”

Darcy didn’t know. Darcy wanted to. Her nails bit against her palm.

Bing flung a hand outward, uncurling her fingers like petals. “He loves his family so much. He wasn’t bragging. I could just tell. His brothers were being a little…a little _loud_, I guess, but he wanted to me to meet his mom, so we went up the back stairs, and we sat with her for a while, too.”

“What was she like?” Did that count as encouragement? Darcy, chewing on dread and the inside of her cheek, hoped not.

Bing frowned a little. “Sad,” she said. “I think they’re all pretty sad, Darcy.”

“You barely know them.” Darcy sat down on one of the wingback chairs, knees slanted to the side.

“Well.” Bing’s eyes bored into her. “I knew you pretty soon, too.”

This was _different_. Surely, Bing could see that. Darcy reached for what to say next; it had to be something that wouldn’t put her and Bing on opposite fronts.

Bing beat her to the punch. “Darcy, I _do_ like him. And I think he likes me. And I am twenty-three, and he is twenty-seven, and so we are both sensible enough to just talk about things like art and music and religion and that sort of thing when _really_, I just want to kiss him because _hello_, have you seen his face? But—” she paused. “Knowing people is just one of my strengths. That doesn’t mean that I also shouldn’t take time. Double negatives. You get me. I have to be more like _you_.”

“More sensible?” Darcy suggested, though that wasn’t what had first come to mind.

“Yes! No kissing. _Yet_.” She giggled. “Crap, you have no idea how many ideas I’ve talked myself out of in the last three hours.”

“I’ve talked myself out of many things,” said Darcy pointedly, “and it’s always been a wise decision.”

“Ugh, that doesn’t help!” Bing blew out her breath. “Oh, by the way, did Harry figure out what to do about the carpet?”

“The carpet?”

“For the dance.”

For some reason, Darcy had missed _that _memo. “Is there…there’s going to be _dancing_?”

“Uh, yeah. It’s a tradition. There’s like, a big ballroom dance and it’s like this super-formal thing. I think that’s kind of why Harry jumped at the chance. I mean, you know that he doesn’t…he hasn’t gotten to know a lot of people in the town well enough.” Bing always found a way to skirt around her brothers’ lack of charity. “But the ballet brings a lot of out-of-town people! It’s a totally different vibe, Harry said.”

How would Harry know? “I suppose he’ll just roll them up and stow them away,” Darcy said, in reference to the rugs. “Outsiders or not, Bing, I doubt you’ll find five couples who can actually ballroom-dance in this town.”

“I’m an optimist. And we can teach people!”

“_You_ can teach people. You know I don’t dance in mixed company.”

“Of course,” Bing said, suddenly glum, “It’s terrible timing.”

_Yes, it is._ Darcy felt the shivers coming over her, looked down to see if her hands had started trembling. “Why?”

“Because of James’ ankle. We were talking about the party and then I remembered he still can barely walk! Oh, dammit. He played it off so swee—politely. At least his cold is better.”

Darcy held up a hand. “Bing, you’re not seriously inviting the Bennets?”

Bing put the pillow over her face. A muffled _yes _came from behind it.

“Bing, really? Can’t you…” Darcy issued a concession through her teeth… “Invite just James?”

“They _all_ want to come. And we need men to dance.”

“We do not need _them_ to dance,” Darcy said, all horror, and more internal horror still because she kept imagining Eli in a tuxedo. Surely Eli did not own a tuxedo. Almost no one in this town would, and it wouldn’t be a proper black-tie affair _anyway_. That did nothing to dispel the illusion. “Bing, no way in hell did Harry agree to this.”

Bing looked pert. “_Actually_, he did!”

_Shit._ “Cal, I take it, was not present?”

“I specifically put together the invite list when Cal wasn’t around,” Bing said defiantly. “I’ve met lots of people in this town and if we’re going to have a big party for the ballet—”

“On a _week’s_ notice,” Darcy interposed inexorably.

“Yes, well, it’s all mostly in place! Just changed locations. Changing locations is _fun_. But, like, all the caterers do this _every year_. And we have a bigger house. The Lucases were thrilled, to be honest.” Bing’s eyes shifted to _dreamy_ again. “And yes, the Bennets are coming. They’re my favorite people here.”

Bing could be stubborn, but it didn’t usually get under Darcy’s skin like this. She stood up. “This conversation has gone a dozen directions,” she said. “So. Have your party, invite whomever you wish. Just remember that I am leaving the next day, and you are leaving shortly after that, if everything goes as we’re planning.” This was her parting shot. “You know, with the internship?”

Bing said softly, “I know.”

Darcy yielded ever-so-slightly. “No need to hold up the pillow in defense. I just—take it slow, Bing. Really. You won’t regret waiting. It’s too early to trust anyone.”

“Darcy,” Bing asked, suddenly very gentle, “Is this about something else?”

The shivers crawled down her arms. “No. No, it’s not. It’s just about—not…doing anything you regret. Just for a nice boy who talks about art. They’re a dime a dozen, Bing. They really are.”

Bing opened her mouth, maybe to argue, then shut it again. “So,” she said. “You’re withholding judgment on him until the end of the week?”

“Sure,” Darcy said. She needed to be alone again. It wasn’t Bing’s fault. 

Bing stood up and smothered her in a hug, the throw pillow tossed aside. “I love you,” she said. “You are so much better than I am, and I know I am a lot to keep in line.” She laughed against Darcy, so that the laugh seemed to ripple through both of them. “It’s like you’re the brain and I’m the heart, and I’m always running off without you. I’ll try not to, this time. OK?”

“Deal.” Darcy drew back, extending a hand so that they could shake on it, and so that it wouldn’t look like she was running away. “I’m sorry, but I really…I haven’t been able to get rid of this headache. Mind if I go to bed?”

“Not at all! Do you want tea? Do you want anything?”

“No, thanks.”

Alone in her room, of course, she wanted many things. She slept and dreamed of the dialect coach who wore cable-knit and wire-rimmed glasses and came every Thursday when Darcy was small, when her mother still struggled with a few English consonants.

The tape played over and over in this dream, the same stilted sentences and aggravating nouns. Louder and louder, until there was no mistaking it.

It was Gemma’s voice.

_Repeat after me._

_Repeat after me._

Darcy sat up in bed. The house was dark. There were only a few hours left until morning.


	12. impossible to be impartial

_“They have both been deceived, I daresay, in some way or other, of which we can form no idea.”_

_i._

The TV was still blaring when Eli got home. Somehow, the night had seemed eternal in Gemma’s company. He had been sure that the whole family would be in bed already.

It wasn’t so. Later, in a moment of sober reflection, he knew he should have seen it coming—

But how was he supposed to know, _really_, that Dad would stew over Eli’s disregard for Tatianna Collins? And once he _did_ know—yeah, OK, Eli wasn’t much for peacekeeping when shit hit the fan. Maybe pouring Dad’s beer down the drain in retaliation for all the blustering _was_ unnecessarily incendiary.

It certainly seemed that way once Dad threw a plate at him.

James stepped between them, as usual. Dad grumbled his way back to the couch, satisfied with a fresh beer. Eli avoided James’ gaze and doggedly took the stairs to Mom’s room.

“Heard shouting.” She smiled, but he saw the lines of tension pinching around her eyes. “What’s wrong?”

Saying _Dad’s an ass_ was too obvious. Eli slumped into the chair next to the window. He had wanted to spend the rest of his night filling James in on his conversation with Gemma—specifically, what a wholly evil and conniving harpy Darcy Williams was—but he owed Mom some restoration of the status quo. “He wants me to give Tatianna Collins a shot. For like, a business proposal that has yet to come into being.”

“Jesus.” Mom shook her head. “That salamander.”

Eli chuckled. “Creative.”

“Have to entertain myself somehow.” Mom eyed him sharply. “Where were you? Date?”

“Kind of.” Eli prodded at a knotted muscle in the back of his neck. It probably seized up every time he came within spitting distance of Dad. “I mean…not really. Just hanging out.”

“You know your brother brought a girl over tonight?”

_Right. Bing._ “What did you think?”

“She’s sweet. Probably too smart for James, but he’s sensible, which is what matters.”

Mom had never appreciated the subtleties of James’ intelligence. “Bing’s cool,” Eli agreed.

“They seem pretty serious.”

“James is always serious when he meets a girl. And they just met.”

“True enough.” Mom considered. “Maybe I should take back the thing I said about _sensible_.”

“He just wants a future,” Eli said, without thinking.

The twist in the line of her mouth only lasted a second, but he saw it. “Love’s not a future,” Mom said. “But nobody wants to believe that in the moment.” She shifted in her chair, hands tightening on the armrests. Eli couldn’t imagine what it would be like, the frustration and panic of immobility. Even now, he tried not to stare. To make her feel like she was being _observed_.

“I heard from my advisor today.” It seemed time to change the subject. “Some new source suggestions.”

“Anything more for me to read?” Mom quirked an eyebrow, a familiar expression even on someone else’s face. “Of your writing, I mean.”

“Just a couple paragraphs.” Eli scrubbed a hand over his face. “Honestly, I’ve been kind of stunted lately.”

“Writer’s block is normal, I hear.”

“It’s like a disease.”

“Well,” Mom quipped, eyes glinting. “It’s not the end of the world, is it?”

He huffed out an exasperated laugh. “Wow. You ever gonna get tired of that one?”

“Nope.” She reached over and patted his knee. “You should get some sleep, hon. It’s late.”

Finally, he would have James to himself. James was folding a mountain of family laundry on his bed. Eli dutifully reached for a tangle of socks.

“So,” he said. “Want to hear something crazy?”

James was a good listener. Eli did Gemma’s story all the justice he could, no detail spared except those particular to the effect that Gemma’s eyes and hands and silken hair had had on him.

“That’s…wow,” James said, when he’d finished. His brow pleated thoughtfully. “Are you—_sure_? I mean, Darcy is definitely kind of reserved, but she’s never even been rude to me. I just—”

Eli had wanted a stronger reaction, but it was James. That the benefit of the doubt would be given freely was, in fact, a given. “How can you _not_ believe it, dude? She screwed Gemma over. Plain and simple.”

James lifted a bleach-mottled bath towel. “Maybe—maybe it’s all some big misunderstanding. Like, rich people stuff. Not that simple, you know?”

Eli threw a pair of Levi’s socks at him. “I know you like to see the best in everyone, man, but you can’t here. I won’t allow it. It can’t be done.”

“Have you tried?”

“That’s not the point.” Eli tugged at the roots of his hair. “Look. Gemma is…I’m not a first-sight kind of person for love and shit, so don’t look at me like that, but it would be a hell of a thing, right? Making that up to get laid? We didn’t even—” James was still looking at him. Eli ratcheted up the eloquence. “I can tell when someone’s lying,” he said. “She wasn’t. She showed up here for work and had the past dumped in her lap. She needed someone to tell, and she chose me.”

James nodded cautiously. “It makes sense to choose you. You’re a trustworthy person.” 

Eli started on a dress shirt, already wrinkled from the dryer. “I’m an asshole, actually. But I’m not going to break her trust by doubting her. What Darcy did is disgusting. And is it _that_ surprising, that she could get away with it? She’s rich. She’s a goddamn _lawyer_.”

James sank down on his bed, staring into middle distance. “I just don’t understand why Bing would like her so much?”

Eli sat beside him. “Because,” he said. “Bing is like you. Good. Actually _good_.” He waved a hand, brushing away the staying power of too much sincerity. “Look, I’m sure that Bing knows nothing about this. How could she? Gemma as much as said, Darcy’s plenty good at playing nice when she wants to.”

“If it’s true, it’s terrible for Gemma,” James returned. It wasn’t quite agreement, yet, but he was getting there. “I’m sorry she had to go through that. She sounds like she’s grounded, though.”

“She’s cool,” Eli said. “And hot.” He grinned. “How’s that for being nonsensical about a girl? You don’t have the market cornered, bud.”

James reddened reliably.

“Speaking of, how was the garden bench, and Bing?”

“Great. You know.” James smiled softly. “I like her a lot. She met Mom, too. I know it’s only been a couple weeks, but I feel—lucky.”

“I’m glad.” And Eli was. It took no effort—just a rush of feeling—to be glad for James. “Is she staying for a while?”

“Actually—” James stood up, fished around in the papers on Eli’s desk. “That reminds me. Harry took over the Lucases’ party, and we’re invited.”

Eli’s eyebrows shot up. “Thanks to Bing, I’m sure.”

“Darcy’s leaving after the party, next weekend. But Bing said she might be staying for a bit. She’s still trying to work out an internship in the City. Harry and Nina said she could hang around as long as she wanted.”

Eli could hear the hope in his tone. “I’m sure things’ll work out.”

“You know.” James folded the invitation carefully back into its envelope. “Maybe it’ll clear things up, seeing Gemma and Darcy face-to-face. At the party.”

“If Darcy doesn’t ban her,” Eli said darkly. “She’d better not. I’m only going if Gemma’s going.” This was a new stance and standard, but he was allowed to be impulsive for the sake of righteousness.

“We really don’t know the whole story until we’ve heard both sides,” James pointed out.

Eli couldn’t agree.

He spent his spare time at the theater, in the remaining days before opening night. Gemma, when not in the midst of unburdening her tortured past, was _fun_. She was busy with rehearsals, of course, but she liked to come out and talk to him, playing with the ribbons on her shoes and sneaking cigarettes. They sat on the steps together when the other girls weren’t around. Tendrils of her pale hair danced across her cheeks and forehead in the June heat, and Eli took no small enjoyment in smoothing them away while she blinked up at him, as sleepily and slyly as a cat.

Inwardly, he_ was_ a little sheepish. The Bennet gene of hanging around dance-hall doors had manifested in him with a vengeance, and in very little time. Levi and Cody both made aggrieved reference to this, until they were appropriately threatened into silence.

“It’s not fair,” Levi grumbled, anyway. “You always get to talk to Gemma.”

It had been a week. Eli rolled his eyes. “I’m older than you. It’s totally fair.” For his own sake, he added, “She’s not like the others.”

Gemma was also a welcome escape from Tatianna Collins, who would neither leave town nor leave the Bennets alone. She had no more official business with them, but Dad was one of the only people who’d shown real interest in Future Governor Burgh’s future. That was enough for Tatianna and her cockeyed plans.

Eli couldn’t possibly have given less of a shit.

The night before the ballet opened, he convinced Gemma to come to dinner with Denny. She had a much warmer reception than Tatianna, and sure, Dad was gross, but Gemma was fully capable of handling him.

She even charmed Mom, which Eli had long since dismissed as an impossible objective.

“I know you have a hard time with your family,” Gemma said, in the red light of sunset. She and Eli had slipped out to the picnic table in the front yard. “But I kind of love them.”

“They can be alright,” Eli said, mentally subtracting Dad from the list. “They like you a lot.”

“Everyone likes me.” Gemma grimaced. “Oops. Pretty big omission there. Ha.”

“Did you…” Eli wasn’t sure how to bring it up, exactly. “The party.”

“Oh, yeah, I got invited. Don’t worry.” She smirked. “Darcy would probably rather throw a drink at me, _Dynasty_-style, than seem like she was scared to see me.” She linked her arms around Eli’s neck, so that her fingertips drifted under his collar, skin against skin. “If you can waltz, baby, I’ll expect a dance.”

He swallowed hard. “Sure thing.” Then, so that he’d have something to focus on other than listening to his own pulse, “I’m afraid the Collins will ask me to dance too. I’m willing to bet she’s wormed an extra invite out of Harry.”

They had all taken to calling her _the Collins_.

“Who is she working for again?” Gemma sounded amused. She’d heard every terrible thing about Tatianna.

“Future Governor Chris Burgh.” Eli scoffed.

“Chris _Burgh_?”

“What, do you know him?”

Gemma pulled back, but left her hands where they were, so that her nails dragged tantalizingly along the back of Eli’s neck. “Holy shit. Chris Burgh—if it’s the same one, which it _has_ to be, if he’s in politics—is Darcy’s _godfather_.”

Eli laughed. “Wow. I shouldn’t be surprised. He sounds terrible.”

“A complete and total dipshit, I promise you. Yeah, their families go way back. He has this skinny, nerdy kid named Anthony or something. Pretty sure Darcy will marry him some day.”

“Amazing,” drawled Eli wickedly. “Ammunition I never knew I needed. I’m sure they’ll be very happy together.” But _Cal_ would be so disappointed. 

“Darcy wasn’t made to be happy,” Gemma reminded him lightly. “It’s not in her nature.”

He wanted so very badly to kiss her. But the kitchen windows were behind them, and Eli wasn’t that stupid. Her arms around him were dangerous enough. 

_ii._

When the curtain opened, Darcy was certain she was ready. She would survive the ballet; she would survive the party. And then she could go—could leave this dusty town and its over-grand theater, leave the too-green fields and too-dark forests, leave boys with sharp smiles and laughing eyes.

The days had hurried by. Her bags were packed. Her gown, shipped upstate at a week’s notice, was ready for a party that wouldn’t deserve it.

Less than twenty-four hours from now, a goodbye; two weeks from that, George’s graduation. The day after, George and Fitz would join her on Block Island for the closest thing to a lazy Sunday Darcy could stomach.

Two hours ago, she’d given Harry the polite praise he’d earned for ice sculptures and fairy lights and dozens of white flowers in a room that had been under scaffolding less than a month ago. Darcy knew how much money could buy, of course, but efficiency could still be elusive.

Bing was more than polite. Bing was in raptures—more than half due, Darcy suspected, to the prospect of a reunion with her beloved Bennets. 

Beside her in the theater, now, Bing’s nerves were still rising to new heights. Did Darcy see James? Did Darcy think that they had good seats?

They were in the front row. The Bennets were not. Darcy tried not to squint under the stage lights and said again, “Bing, please calm down.”

“We’re about to witness something _magical_,” Bing whispered, her fingertips staccato on the arm of her seat. “Who could be _calm_?”

Not Darcy. Ready was not the same as calm. The sequins on her skirt scratched her fingertips. The theater _was_ full; she’d give Meryton that.

_Nobody can see you_, she reminded herself. 

_Nobody is looking._

The curtain ruffled back. Suddenly, Darcy wanted to know where the Bennets were—wanted to know where _Eli _was.

She did not turn around.

Bing’s hand clenched hers.

“_I don’t want to bug you_,” Bing had said, that morning. “_But...are you really going to be OK if…that girl…_”

“_She’s just an old acquaintance_,” Darcy had told her. Anything more would seem like too much. “_We knew each other in high-school. We didn’t get along._” The puzzle pieces of a story could be forced together, if no one else knew what the final picture should look like.

Then Cal had come into the room, dissatisfied, it seemed, with eavesdropping from behind the door instead of joining the conversation, and had demanded to know who they were talking about.

“_Just one of the dancers_,” Bing had blurted out, before Darcy could stop her. Bing hadn’t even seen it as an admission. How could Darcy be cruel enough to tell her she wished Bing knew nothing at all?

Darcy had said only, “_Bing, please. Let’s drop it_,” and turned away from Cal’s questioning glance.

She shuddered under the memory now, as the dancers flocked across the stage, pristine and free and stilted all at once. Darcy could never have been a ballerina; she was too stiff.

But all the same, she found herself demanding answers from the story unfolding imperfectly before her. How could anyone love Siegfried, when he was so damnably blind? And what did it mean to be Odile, the conniving, black-draped witch, if you were cast in the role against your will, time and time again?

It meant, at least, what Darcy had always known of _Swan Lake_: she was no Odette. She had never been meek and shy and sweet, seeking the love of a prince.

Gemma had several minor roles. Darcy kept track of costume changes intently, so that she would always know exactly where Gemma was. Graceful as ever, silver-blonde under the lights, and beating against the inside of Darcy’s chest in relentless rhythm.

She was glad when Gemma left the stage.

When it was over, Bing’s eyes sparkled with tears. “I’m so in love,” she sighed, and then turned to a tall man in a suit who had appeared beside her. “Wasn’t it _amazing_?”

Darcy realized, as the lights warmed the room, that the man was James.

He nodded in answer to Bing’s question, and smiled shyly. Darcy stared at him, not speaking, until she realized that he was trying to shake her hand.

“Nice to see you.” She sounded wooden.

“You too. How are you?”

From what she could tell, he was alone. “I’m well, thanks. Did you enjoy the ballet?” Of course, Bing had asked him basically the same thing a moment ago.

“Yes,” he said. “I enjoy it every year.” 

Darcy waited for him to say something gallant for Bing’s sake, about how this year was of course better than all the ones before, but he didn’t. The conversation dropped, and James looked down at his shoes.

Bing picked it all up again. “I’m going to be _dreaming_ about this for the next year,” she said emphatically. “Darcy, do you mind if I ride back to the house with James?”

Darcy shook her head. “Do what you like.”

Bing needed no further encouragement. “See you there!” she said, and then she was off, a flutter of spangles and pale green—Bing liked green—lost in the crowd with James by her side.

Darcy, left alone, seemed frozen in place. She tried to see Eli, but she couldn’t. She was ashamed of herself for searching—here, she thought she saw the flash of his smile, or the wave in his hair, or heard him laughing at something someone else had said—but it was for nothing.

She scolded herself for being an idiot and grasping at anything that looked like hope.

_Remember, you don’t even like him_.

Cal appeared beside her. “You ready?” He offered his arm, and Darcy took it. He was wearing a tuxedo, never afraid of being more formal than everyone else. He looked handsome and utterly uninteresting.

“I’m ready.” She had promised herself that she would be.

Cal watched the crowd stream out ahead of them. Meryton cleaned up a little nicer than Darcy expected, but the chasm between her and the rest of them was no narrower.

Cal said, “We’re in for one hell of a party.”


	13. and never allow yourself to be blinded by prejudice

_“Had the family made an agreement to expose themselves as much as they could during the evening, it would have been impossible for them to play their parts with more spirit or finer success.”_

_i._

In the flurry of the crowd, he had lost sight of Gemma. She must have left for the party with Denny. Eli smoothed down an errant thread on his jacket cuff and headed for the truck.

James was already there, hands in his pockets, listening to Bing talk at a mile a minute.

“Eli!” Bing exclaimed. “Oh, wow. You look great!”

Eli knew he didn’t, but he thanked her.

“Bing’s riding with us,” James said, his voice warm with pleasure.

Eli grinned and clapped him on the back. The ballet and all its trappings was an incongruity with the unpaid electric bill on the kitchen table, Dad’s stale breath, the heap of dirty laundry in the hallway that had tripped no less than three Bennets since Levi neglected to wash it this morning. But Eli tried to take enjoyment where he could.

Moreover, he didn’t have much choice. The ballet was a Bennet requirement.

Dad, stale breath, beer-stained flannel and endless chatter and all, had a finger on the town’s pulse. He’d found it and played upon it with the good looks and charm that time and alcohol had faded. Then his sons stepped up, young and charming (enough) to smile brightly over worn-out suits, to dance with pretty ballerinas.

In Meryton, that was enough for discounted tickets.

At present, Eli scanned the throng for Dad and Levi and Cody. Mark had stayed at home with Mom; he wasn’t a dancer. Half-submerged in Eli’s subconscious was the pleasant memory of Gemma’s gossamer sheen and lithe poses.

Then Dad and the boys crashed onto the scene and Eli jerked back to reality.

“You coming with us?” Dad leered. Bing had chosen them for more than the ballet; Bing, who seemed to bring a permanent glow to James’ smile, and who did not deserve a leer, had given them the key to the party.

“I am!” she said. “Nice to see you, Mr. Bennet.”

“It’ll be a tight squeeze,” Dad said. “Hop on in.”

“Oh my God,” Eli muttered. To James, he added, “Keep her with you?”

So Bing was tucked against the passenger window with James beside her and Dad driving. That left Eli crammed up in the back with Cody and Levi, finding solace once again in his own thoughts. Sure, Gemma hadn’t danced in a main role, but it didn’t matter. It was right, and almost poetic, how the story had unfurled in line with the wanderings of Eli’s own mind: black and white swans, the duality of good and evil, power stamping out all the hope in someone’s life. Power and greed.

It was strange that Bing was friends with Darcy.

“I’m so excited for real dancing,” Bing said wistfully, patting the curly knot in her hair. “It’s the most romantic thing in the world.”

Dad chuckled.

Eli sighed. But she had a point. Now he imagined Gemma in a slip of a dress, light in his arms, tangled together until lips found lips.

Then he reminded himself: wasn’t he supposed to be wiser than the rest of his world?

Privately, he could admit that wisdom was sometimes a real bore.

In the front seat, Bing linked her fingers with James’.

The Lee’s house was ablaze with light. Eli bit down on the urge to turn around and leave. But Bing was leading the way with a spring in her step.

God, this had better work out for James. Eli couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen him so happy.

Tall, pale flowers lined the hall. The big room that had been closed off when James and Eli were stranded there during the storm was now wide-open, guarded by elaborate ice sculptures at each end. That was the kind of shit Eli had only seen in movies.

“Damn,” Levi whistled, staring up at the high windows and gilt-papered walls, the mountain range of champagne flutes. “Can we get rich?”

“That’s the plan,” said Dad.

Three weeks. This had all come to pass in—

The dancing hadn’t started yet. There was a long buffet table and a well-stocked bar. Dad gravitated towards that, of course, with a few stops along the way to pay tribute to Meryton’s finest.

Eli kept an eye out for Charlie, and most of all, for Gemma.

A hand tugged at his arm. He turned to see Denny. She had changed her costume for an evening gown, but she was still in stage makeup. “Hey, Eli!”

“Save a dance for me,” he said, smiling. “What’s up?”

“I’m an errand-girl tonight. Gemma couldn’t come. She wanted me to, you know. Tell you personally?” She rolled her eyes. “Look, I think we both know the only reason she’d miss out on all of _this_.” She gestured at Eli. “The powers that be? Maybe…one power in particular?

Across the room, Darcy was smiling politely, disdainfully, at something Mr. Lucas had said.

It was like Eli had taken a glass off the tower of champagne flutes and crushed it in his fist. The anger cut bright and hard. _One_ week of knowing Gemma had been enough to like her, to want her, to owe her at least some basic loyalty.

His dislike of Darcy, once trivial, had heightened to something more than personal. It wasn’t Eli’s own annoyance burning hot and steady; this was real injustice.

And real injustice had just screwed up his evening. Real injustice was also, as it happened, walking towards him, with one of those champagne glasses in hand.

Denny melted into the crowd as Darcy approached.

“Eli.”

“Darcy.” He hoped it sounded like an insult.

“Where’s Bing? I know she rode with you.” Looking at her, it was hard to tell if she was someone who’d ruin a girl’s life over jealousy. Damned if he didn’t believe it, though.

“She’s over there, with James.” His tone was barely civil.

Darcy paused for a moment, her eyes passing over him. Then she nodded once and turned away. Black hair shifted over pale shoulders.

“Dude, what are you doing?”

It was Charlie. He looked ill-at-ease in a suit that was undoubtedly more expensive than Eli’s.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Charlie said, with a deliberate glance at the retreating Darcy, “I know she pissed you off, and I know you told me some stuff about her having beef with Gemma, but...I think she’s interested in you, man. Don’t just throw that away.”

Charlie. Always practical. Too practical. Eli scoffed. “You’re kidding me. She’s not.”

Charlie shrugged. “Whatever you say. C’mon. They’re doing the name thing.”

Before the floor opened for dancing, every year, anyone who knew shit about ballroom dancing wrote their name on a slip of paper and tossed it into one of two fishbowls. Eli thought he’d escape this year, first because he hadn’t expected and invite, and then, because he thought the tradition would die with the Lucases. Someone must have told the Lees, or just brought the tradition along. There were enough ballerinas around that it didn’t really matter who you got paired up with.

Eli brushed into James on the way there. James and Bing, to be more exact—side-by-side on some ivory-wrapped chairs, beside a vat of punch. “Sucks for you two,” he said, nodding in the direction of the fishbowls. “Should have put his foot up more, Bing. I kept telling him. He’d be better by now.”

“That’s OK.” Bing grinned. “I know he’ll be cheering me on from the sidelines.” She stood up, taking Eli’s offered arm. “I love this town, you know? What a cute tradition.”

Eli exchanged a grin with James and felt his spirits lift, even in the absence of Gemma. The next moment sunk him low again; he saw, though Bing hadn’t, that Dad had his arm around the neck of some overly tan blonde chick. Eli recognized her after a half-second; Kayla Niles, daughter of Meryton’s car-sales king.

_What the hell, Dad. Already?_

He and Bing submitted their slips. She wrote two separate slips, and he lifted a questioning brow.

“Darcy,” she whispered, lifting a conspiratorial finger to her lips. “Don’t tell her.”

As if Eli would speak to Darcy for any reason other than strict necessity!

Bing must have seen someone she wanted to talk to, because she bid Eli farewell and hurried off. He watched her go, watched James’ eyes follow her across the room in a gaze of unmitigated admiration.

If the world was good to anyone, it should be good to them.

“Eli? I’d recognize you _anywhere_.”

He had forgotten about the Collins. Now she had descended upon him, while he was too busy thinking nice thoughts to be on high alert. Cursing inwardly, Eli assumed his best expression of bland disinterest and merely nodded in greeting.

“_What_ a party.” Tatianna was wearing approximately ten thousand marabou feathers. It made Eli want to sneeze. She pursed her lips and turned her head from side to side, then jolted abruptly. “Oh, my actual God. That’s Darcy Williams.”

_Shit_, thought Eli. _Here we go_.

Tatianna left him in the dust and beelined for Darcy. Eli couldn’t hear what was said but he could observe from afar, and the thought of two truly terrible people having to interact with each other was oddly satisfying. Tatianna seized both of Darcy’s hands and shook them eagerly.

Darcy’s face was one of controlled shock. Or disgust. Disgust might be more likely. She spoke one sentence, freed herself from Tatianna’s grasp, and turned her back before Tatianna could start in again.

It was surprisingly effective.

Eli stifled a laugh.

“Something funny?”

_Shit_. He couldn’t catch a break.

“Cal. Didn’t expect to see you here.”

Cal looked confused, as Eli intended, then annoyed, as Eli also intended. “Most of us aren’t here to ogle the entertainment,” he said tightly. “Keep your family in line, yeah?”

“Hey, man, no shame. I can hook you up if you’ve struck out with…any or all of these women.” Eli waved a hand expansively. Cal flushed with rage.

“Not really my level.”

“Hmm.” Eli glanced pointedly in the direction of Darcy, and that was apparently too much provocation for Cal. He stalked off.

It was just as well; the announcements had started. Obviously, the Lee brothers weren’t going to deign to run the partner lottery, so Chuck Lucas stepped up and started reeling off pairings in his best grandstand voice. Eli winced in sympathy for Charlie, like he’d been doing for as many years as it had taken to figure out that parents could be hellishly embarrassing.

“Eli Bennet,” bellowed Chuck, then drew a slip from the women’s pool—“And Darcy Williams.”

_Goddamn it_.

_ii._

Gemma hadn’t come. Darcy dragged in one breath, then another, and found that breathing grew easier with time.

With that threat out of the picture, it was a convivial, sparkling party, the kind Bing had wanted. It was not the sort of thing that Darcy herself enjoyed with any regularity. It was so easy, at a party, to feel alone.

Here, especially, she had almost no one to talk to. It wouldn’t be fair to monopolize Bing’s time, and her conversation with Eli had left her a little—stabbed, somehow. Brusque was supposed to _her _game.

Given the choice, Darcy would have spent this last night with Bing. Just Bing. Watching movies, chatting, packing on her own time. But there were some things Bing never really understood. Bing loved a party almost more than anything else, and it was hard for Bing to recognize that other people could hate the things she loved.

Darcy didn’t even want her to.

“Oh, he’s got that shit locked down. Locked down.” A voice wafted towards her; she knew it, but hadn’t placed it yet. “Can’t keep them two apart. Dime piece worth more than a dime, you know? And not half-bad to look at. He could do much worse, I told him. Much worse. That’s the kind of girl who’ll pay for her own ring.”

Mr. Bennet. Standing a few feet from her, talking loudly to a small group of men who had the same bloodshot eyes he did. He was gesturing, too, punctuating each word with the jab of a thick cigar, and she followed the line of it in horror—

He meant Bing. Bing and James.

They were sitting by a punch bowl, talking close. They couldn’t hear him.

Three weeks. They’d been here _three_ _weeks_. How could so much have happened? How could so much have gotten out of hand?

Confronting Mr. Bennet would be pointless, and in poor taste. Darcy stiffened her shoulders against an oncoming shudder and moved away to stand glowering in a corner. She tried to organize her thoughts—her _plans. _

Time passed inexorably. The crowd swarmed up to submit their names to the dance lottery, but Darcy stayed where she was. She’d lost sight of Bing, and of the Bennets. The only other attention she received was from Chris Burgh’s odious lackey, finally making an appearance, and Cal, who was circling like a vulture. He’d ask her to dance later. She hadn’t yet decided if she had the energy to refuse.

Chuck Lucas grabbed a mic and started speaking.

In another moment, Bing was at her side, breathless, like she wanted to tell her something. Darcy tried to keep her expression neutral.

“I hope you don’t mind,” Bing was saying.

“Don’t mind what?” It came out more accusatory than she meant it to.

Bing waved her hands. “I’m too chicken not to tell you. I know you dance beautifully, so I did the thing—they have this tradition here? To be honest it’s kind of cute and classical. I don’t know...or maybe _quaint_? I should have said quaint but I didn’t want to be condescending. Ugh. So. They have this tradition, where everyone who can dance—_really_ dance—puts their name on a slip to get randomly paired up and lead the dancing with something real. A waltz, whatever.”

“And?” Darcy stared at her.

“I put your name in. Surprise!” Bing squeaked. She was clearly nervous, and she wasn’t wrong to be.

“You thought I’d want to dance?”

“I _hope__d_?”

“Damn it, Bing—” But it was too late. They’d started reading the names, and she stopped speaking to listen. She should have been paying more attention to all of this, earlier, instead of looking for a ghost who wasn’t there. Chuck Lucas, red-faced and gregarious, was wheeling off the names like an auctioneer.

“It’s going to be exciting, I promise!” Bing said, clutching at her arm, and Darcy wondered when it had happened that Bing was no longer frightened of Darcy’s annoyance. Was that a good thing or a bad thing? And was it specific to this party, or something more permanent?

Bing’s name was called almost first. She wasn’t paired with James; that was unsurprising. He was still limping, anyway. A few more names past, and Darcy waited with a pit of dread plummeting in her stomach.

“Eli Bennet...and Darcy Williams.”

Bing gasped.

Darcy said nothing. She saw Eli across the room at that very moment. He looked pissed as hell, and handsomer than he had a right to.

“We’re having a conversation later,” she threatened Bing, who was unfazed.

“Yup!” Bing dashed away to find whatever partner she’d been attached to, and Darcy stood alone under the glow of too-new chandeliers, wondering what she was supposed to make of it.

And why had the pit in her stomach turned into something else entirely? It was wrong, very wrong, for her to care at all how her hair and makeup looked—it was foolish to stand here as still as stone, waiting for the floor to move under her feet. Who was she, if she could not look ahead?

_God_, but Eli moved like a cat—smooth and easy and disdainful. He was coming towards her. He was _here_.

Darcy realized that she was clenching her fists.

“What a stroke of luck,” Eli said, with perfect flatness.

Darcy tilted her chin up, a tiny motion. “I suppose we’ll find out how lucky we are when we start to dance.”

Her heart was beating in her throat. If she could have forced it down, she would have, but it stayed there, thrumming insistently.

Chuck had finished reading off the names. Nearly two dozen couples in all; less than half of the assembled party. Everyone else would be watching. Traditions were traditions, and duty was duty. Darcy certainly knew that more than most people.

The strings slanted the opening bars of a waltz. The floor cleared out—and she was almost, almost impressed by the sudden formality and purposefulness of the town.

Not that it mattered.

Eli’s expression hovered between _blank_ and _disdainful_. She missed his lively gaze and then realized she had no right to.

“I think we had better get in position,” she said, and he obliged.

Their fingers laced together. Had she forgotten, somehow, how much broader and longer a man’s hand was than her own? Eli had tanned hands, with graceful fingers that were warm against hers. She remembered him bent over the piano, taut and passionate, and wondered why fate had brought him into her life at all.

Swallowing, Darcy rested her hand on his shoulder. It was very hard not to flinch when his other hand came to curve around her waist. She wondered if he could feel her heart beating through her ribs; but no, that wasn’t right—her heart was in her throat, after all.

There was nothing like dancing with someone who knew how to move with you. It didn’t matter, if you hated dancing. Skill could make you surrender.

Eli _was _skilled. Her eyes were at the level of his lips. She found herself fascinated by them, which was all wrong, and so she looked down at his jaw and throat. That was no better.

Darcy raised her eyes to his.

He looked angry. Then, in an instant, he resumed a mask of boredom and disinterest.

This was the time for cool and calm conversation, but Darcy’s throat was full of her beating heart and so she could think of nothing at all to say.

They turned across the floor. Somewhere, above the strands of music, Darcy heard Bing’s easy laugh.

“I’m afraid we have to talk at some point,” Eli said. He spoke low, but she could feel his voice as well as hear it—they were that close.

“Do we?” _Damn it. Why would you say that? _

“A very little will suffice.” Eli’s lips quirked faintly. “You could talk about how unattractive a melting ice sculpture is. I could compliment the wine selection, if I had had any wine. But I’ll save that for later. We have to stretch this out.”

“You talk by rule, then, when dancing?” She thought she felt his hand tighten against her, and tried to resist the inexplicable urge to lean closer to him.

“When necessary,” he said. There was the spark in his eyes—amber, tiger eyes, more dangerous than ordinary hazel. “I presume you do everything by rule.”

“Generally.”

He chuckled softly, almost humorlessly, but that relentless spark still flitted. “See there? I was right about luck. You and I, never speaking unless we amaze the world by a single utterance.”

Darcy wasn’t about to let that go. “I’ve never known you to be one for _single utterances_.”

“Maybe not.” He let her spin out, her skirt pleating and twirling, and pulled her back in. She couldn’t see his forearms, since he was wearing a suit jacket. It was no use dwelling on whether she might want to see them. No use at all.

“So why the rule for conversation?”

“I’m just trying to understand you better.” His voice was bright, almost amused, but even less friendly.

_Understand._ To understand Darcy, there was more than the Bentley and the law degree and the horses of long ago. There was George, and there was Fitz; there were paperbacks on the Connecticut bookshelves, the phone call about the plane crash. Every year a different one, but all separated keenly by _before_ and _after_. There was loneliness at parties, and there was so much more than that.

“I really wish you wouldn’t.” She paused. “Try to understand me, I mean.”

“Shocking. Why not?”

Oh, if only her heart would leave her alone. “I don’t think the result would reflect well on either of us.”

_Spin, back, to the side, back._

“Something to hide?” Eli queried. They were close again—lips, eyes, hands. It was unbearable in one way, and in another, very bearable indeed.

“Everyone has something to hide.”

“True. I’m a shit card-player.” He paused, mouth O-ing. “Oops. Secret’s out.” His gaze slashed across her again. “But you...let’s see. You don’t really make a _secret_ of your implacable resentment.”

She wondered what he was getting at, and why it stung so much. “When, as in my case, a good opinion once lost is lost forever, it’s only fair to be open about the process.”

“Lost forever, hmm?” Eli tucked his lower lip between his teeth for a moment, then said, “And of course, you’re _very_ careful about losing those pesky good opinions?”

“I try to be.”

“Because you’re rich,” he said, very levelly and very coldly. “So your good opinion carries a lot more weight?”

“It does.”

“That’s what I hear,” he agreed, amiable again in an instant, but dangerously so. “From Gemma Wickham. You remember her? Or does loss of good opinion also mean loss of memory?”

And just like that, the curious but not unpleasant feeling between her ribs had dropped down into the familiar pit in her stomach again. She struggled to keep her composure. “I’m sure,” she said at last, “That Gemma seems easier to understand.”

If Eli had a rejoinder, she never heard it. There was a sudden crash. He jerked against her, and swore under his breath.

The music stopped. Darcy turned, her hands falling from Eli’s. Some yards away, Mr. Bennet was sprawled in the middle of the dancefloor, blood spurting from his nose.

It was the Lees’ house, and Darcy was their friend. That made her half a hostess. Eli was running, and so was she.

A crowd had gathered. There were shouts and thumps and Darcy pushed through the hustling bodies around her. Eli was pulling one of his younger brothers—Levi, to be exact—off a portly businessman. Apparently the apple didn’t fall far from the Bennet family tree. On the floor, Mr. Bennet groaned.

“What,” came Cal’s distinct, disgusted tones, “is going on?”

“That drunk bastard was harassing my daughter,” sputtered Levi’s target, pointing to the floor. He looked a little rumpled, and his nose was bloodied too. Darcy didn’t recognize him, but with his slicked back hair, she thought he looked like a mob boss. Or a car dealer.

Eli had his little brother half in a headlock, but he straightened up when Cal turned to him.

“I think you’d better go,” Cal said, with a nasty smile. “Take the rabble—I’m sorry, _your _rabble—with you.”

Eli said nothing. He was white to the lips. Darcy’s chest was doing that strange thing again, halfway between pity and guilt.

She stepped forward, raising her voice clearly. “Nothing to see here. Please go back to the party, we’ll handle this.” She had yet to be in a real courtroom, but she knew how to command a scene. The assembled throng looked a bit shamefaced, and filtered away.

Eli released Levi. James and Cody had come up, and Bing was with them. Her hands were over her mouth.

Poor Bing. Darcy had been right, to fear disaster.

“He’s shitfaced,” Eli said to James, low enough that Cal wouldn’t hear. Darcy heard it, though. “I’ll drag him out. Go get the truck?”

Where Eli was pale, James was blushing. He fumbled in the pocket of his suit jacket and pulled out car keys. “Go get the truck, Cody.”

“You can’t walk,” Eli said.

James, levelly: “I’ll manage.”

A shift. Eli nodded to Cody, then Levi. “Go with him, asshole,” Eli said to Levi.

The two younger boys, sufficiently chastened, hurried off.

“Can I do anything?” Bing murmured. James flinched.

“No. Thanks. Thank you.”

Darcy didn’t want to imagine their humiliation. Then again, she didn’t have to. The shame of it was written on their faces. “Cal,” she said, pushing her hair behind her neck, “Would you go get Bing a glass of wine?”

Cal opened his mouth, but she pinned him into silence with a look. He turned, with one last sneer in the Bennets’ direction, and Bing followed him away, her eyes filling with tears.

“There’s a closer door over here,” Darcy said calmly, looking at Eli. “If that would be easier.”

He nodded wordlessly. On the floor, Mr. Bennet coughed wetly. Darcy dug the nails of one hand into the wrist of the other. “Do you need anything from me?”

“Nothing,” Eli said, through his teeth.

“Thank you,” said James. And Eli nodded again, and Darcy felt a pricking under her eyelids as though she, like Bing, was going to start crying. She should leave them; she shouldn’t watch.

“Then,” she said, over the music that had started again, “Good night.”

As if there had been very much good about it.


	14. the honour of a private audience

_“It is by no means certain that another offer may ever be made to you.”_

_i._

James found Eli on the garden bench.

He didn’t want to talk to James, or anyone, but he didn’t tell James to go away. He even nudged aside his balled-up jacket so that James didn’t have to stand there on his bum ankle.

“So,” James said. “He’s sleeping.”

Eli swallowed. His throat was dry. “Good for him.” His throat was dry, but he wanted a cigarette. And that, too, was a betrayal, because cigarettes were all tangled up with Dad. He had a specific memory of Dad on this very bench, one pinched between his lips, glowing orange in the dark.

Eli had been what—six? Seven?

_Try it_, Dad had said. Eli had, and then he’d coughed and sputtered and choked until his eyes teared up, while Dad laughed and patted him on the back.

The worst part was that it was a good memory.

“You gonna come inside?” James asked softly.

“No.” The collar of Eli’s shirt was plastered to his neck with sweat, and sweat itched. But he wasn’t coming inside. He wasn’t done being angry.

“I think he’ll be sorry in the morning.”

“He’s always sorry in the morning.”

A bitter silence fell. James was in pajamas, work boots untied on his feet, the laces dragging. He probably wanted to be in bed himself, was almost certainly dog-tired from fighting drunk Dad into a relatively compliant state. Especially with his ankle.

Eli hadn’t helped. Eli had escaped the truck as soon as humanly possible, without looking back.

_Selfish_.

“Sorry you didn’t get more time with Bing.”

James’ phone glowed pale in the darkness as he thumbed over the screen. “It’s OK.”

It wasn’t. Eli dragged in a breath of damp night air. No cigarettes. It was probably better this way. “I like her, man. I really do.”

“So do I,” said James.

Insufferably, Dad _was_ sorry in the morning. Nobody else cared that much; Mom was poking sly fun at what she’d heard about the evening, the younger boys kept hyping it up as some heroic tale of Bennet glory, and Eli pushed the feeling of wanting to kill everyone down into a low simmer of scorn.

Which was, admittedly, perfect for apocalyptic thesis writing. 

He’d gotten exactly one paragraph in before Dad was hollering for him at the foot of the stairs.

“Eli! Someone here to see you!”

For some reason, he half-expected it to be Darcy. That shouldn’t have been his first thought, and it pissed him off still further. He trudged downstairs all the same, opened the door, then nearly turned tail and sprinted back up again.

Tatianna Collins, decked out in an offensive shade of green, beamed at him. “Your dad said we could have the, um, living room to ourselves.”

“What do you _want_?” Eli demanded.

“You.”

Taking her to the living room seemed like encouragement; _not_ taking her meant running the risk that whatever batshit-crazy spiel she was about to unload would be overheard.

Eli jerked a thumb in the direction of the living room. She led; he followed her. People had likely gone to the guillotine more willingly.

With last night’s mess, Eli had almost, mercifully, forgotten about the Collins. That had been a mistake, it seemed.

Tatianna didn’t sit down. “I have a proposal for you, Eli.”

“A…what?”

“A business proposal.” She clasped her hands together. “But that—that _cheapens_ it, doesn’t it? Let me explain. Let me _persuade_. You know that I am a representative of our next governor. New York’s _own_ Christopher Burgh. He needs—but no. _He_ does not need. His _campaign_ needs.” She pressed a knuckle against her lips. “Campaigns need bodies. Not as on the battlefield; not yet.”

Eli had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing, which was a mistake, because that lost him an opportunity to tell her off.

“We need your face,” Tatianna was saying earnestly. “Clean up that stubble, much as I regret it—” Her hand darted out and Eli evaded a swipe at the last second—

“The hell?” Eli said. “I’m not going to be part of some ad for this guy.”

“Not just an ad—we have…we have events. Cultural events. Art events. Future Governor Burgh is a real champion of the arts. And he has many donors who need—escorts to these. It’s a prime job. You just—we’d outfit you in Tom Ford, you’d drink champagne, and look pretty…” She reached out again and Eli pinned her wrist this time.

“No,” he said. 

Tatianna blinked. Her hand went limp in his grasp. “No?”

“No, I’m not prostituting myself for…_art_ events.”

She recovered with mechanical quickness. “This is a really great origin story. The faux reluctance. God! He’s going to _love_ you.”

Eli let go of her hand.

“You would be the wealthy son of a Bostonian architect, of course,” Tatianna prattled on. Apparently his _no_ hadn’t meant a damn thing. It was absolutely necessary to stop her now; Levi might walk in. Or worse, _Dad_, who was assuredly in on this whole plot.

“I’m not interested,” Eli said. “So, _so_ not interested.” He looked at the ceiling, at the water stain that spread into a delta there, a map he’d traced with James when they were kids. “You’d best be satisfied with whatever pipeline you’re going to carve across our property, and call it a day.”

He lowered his gaze. She was staring at him, open-mouthed, a little less chipper. “I don’t think you understand,” she said. “Your father _promised_ you’d do this, Eli.”

“My father is an old drunk,” Eli said. “That’s what you get.”

“Mr. Burgh is _expecting_ you.” Tatianna had forgotten, in her distress, to call him_ Future Governor_. “I told him this was a done deal!”

“Oh, that does suck,” Eli said, almost pleasantly. “For you, I mean. I’m fine with it.”

Tatianna smoothed down her hair, which would not be smoothed, with trembling hands. “You’ll rethink this,” she said sharply. “You have to. This is the best offer you’re ever going to get. Sex appeal doesn’t last forever, Eli.”

“Have a nice day,” Eli said. “I’m sure you remember where the door is.”

He didn’t look back. Whatever the Collins did or said thereafter was not his concern. Eli grabbed the truck keys off the hook in the front hall.

For the fifteen-minute drive to Meryton, he did his best not to think. He’d find Gemma, that was all. Find Gemma and laugh at the whole thing. The _whole thing_, of course, was dangerously close to being _his whole life_, but that was a mire of self-pity for another day.

He called her from the theater parking lot.

She picked up, and said, “You must hate me.”

“Never. I could never hate you.”

Gemma laughed. “You sound like you need me,” she said. “And I’m sorry to disappoint…again. I’m out of town.”

Eli told her he wasn’t disappointed.

“I needed to clear my head,” she explained. “Get over the…the fear, I guess. I couldn’t do it.”

He understood. He’d been obliged to, as the one at the dance last night, holding the wrong girl in his arms.

Now, it didn’t seem worth it to burden her with the details of his shame. He’d cool off. He’d go somewhere, somewhere that wasn’t home.

“I miss you.” Gemma’s voice curved around those words, and he believed her. Don’t knock it till you try it, believing in something you barely know. Eli wasn’t reckless, but the rest of the world was, and sometimes he wanted a risk, wanted a dream, wanted the right girl, even if he’d just met her.

Gemma had to go. Eli sat in the truck for a long time, running one hand over the worn edge of the steering wheel, wondering what he would find if went home. Tatianna Collins, maybe, refusing to leave unless he signed on the dotted line?

He drove in the opposite direction of Longbourn road. Driving and thinking blended together while the sun fell out of the sky, and Eli breathed a little easier, even without the sympathy of Gemma or James.

Tatianna Collins was gone when Eli got home that night. Gone forever, from the way Dad was yelling in the kitchen. Eli sauntered in like nothing in the world was wrong, and Dad almost had an apoplexy when he caught sight of him.

If Eli could, he’d put out of his mind forever what happened between walking in that door and sitting on Charlie Lucas’ back porch nursing a black eye and split knuckles.

To be fair to himself, Dad was treating a hangover with a couple of beers, Dad was livid, Dad had wanted something from him that Eli wasn’t prepared to give. Eli didn’t remember who threw the first punch. He’d thrown the last one though, laying Dad out flat, and then Mom had screamed.

That froze him. Froze all of them, James and Mark in the act of intervening, Dad in the middle of cursing his second son’s name as a disgrace to the family prospects.

Eli left after that.

The Lucases’ back porch was an obvious choice because he knew Charlie could come and talk to him there without him being seen by anyone else. He looked like a vagabond, probably. Even Tatianna Collins wouldn’t want his face now, what with the swelling.

Hey, at least Dad matched.

Charlie listened patiently to the bits and pieces Eli told. He brought out an icepack—a real one, not just the frozen peas favored by the Bennets—and said, quite calmly, “You can...hang for a while.”

The sun was all but gone. This time last night, he’d had an evening full of ideas about dancing with Gemma still ahead.

“Thanks,” said Eli. The ice stung, but he pressed it harder against his eye. What he said next stung, too. “I think this it.”

“This is...what?”

“I’m moving out.” Mom’s face flashed through his mind. The bills and the dented truck and the upstairs room he shared with James flashed through his mind. He winced it all away; it was easy enough to pretend that the wince was because his bruises. “I’m leaving.”

_ii._

“I’m going to miss you so much,” Bing said. Her lower lip was actually quivering.

“You’re going to be absolutely fine,” Darcy said. The worst part was that she _believed _it. Bing had grown all too fond of Meryton, and all too fond of James Bennet.

Darcy had made a decision about Meryton and James Bennet, but it wasn’t one she planned to discuss. When Bing hugged her for the third time, she said only, “You’ll see me again soon. The internship will comet together.”

Bing’s face fell further still.

Darcy narrowed her eyes. It might take more fight than she’d planned, but that was of no consequence. When Darcy set her mind to something, Bing just didn’t have what it took to stand in her way.

And Darcy’s plan really _was_ for the best. Even a brief reflection on the events of the party would support _that _conclusion. Meryton was a jumble of a place, with nothing to do but be reckless. It had dressed itself in borrowed finery, and made quite a jumbled spectacle.

Cal might call it a farce, but Darcy knew better. It was a pity, that people had suffered. But pitying people wasn’t the same thing as saving them. Bing was too entangled to understand that. Someone had to understand it for her.

“You sure you can’t stay till dinner? You don’t need to catch a train,” Bing coaxed. It was true; Darcy was taking the Bentley down and wasn’t at the mercy of anyone else’s schedule.

She was merciless enough, though. “I’m sorry, Bing, but I need to get settled. Early hours at the firm. _Tomorrow._” She tried not to mull over it. “Also, I want to have dinner with George and Fitz tonight. Check in.”

Bing nodded. “Of course.” They were standing in Darcy’s room, with Darcy’s suitcases stacked around them. Darcy wondered, traitorously, if she would miss this place when she was gone. Bing said, almost hopefully, “It’s been quite the vacation, hasn’t it?”

Darcy felt the quick, relentless return of a sensation; Eli’s fingers tracing the lines of her ribs as they danced. “Yes.”

She thanked Harry and Nina and Cal with appropriate warmth. Cal tried to kiss her hand, which was outdated and disgusting. She evaded him and went to her car with only Bing in tow.

“I love you so much,” Bing said, “But I wish I was better at knowing whether or not you’re OK.”

“I’m always OK,” Darcy said calmly. It was a lie, but not one that would hurt Bing. “You’re a darling. And I’m going to call you and text you and everything within the next twelve hours. Promise.”

Bing’s arms were around her once again. “Did you have a fun time?”

“With you? Always.”

Bing disappeared first, of course, around the edge of the driveway. Then all of Netherfield sunk from view, and she was spinning past the Bennets’ house, not looking at it. Soon Meryton and its glamorous old theater and dusty streets were far from view. Darcy only rolled down her windows when the air was unfamiliar.

She was going, going, gone.

All of which was to say that Eli Bennet had done something to every string that wove her together, and she hated it and needed more of it and never wanted to speak of it again.

That was her _problem_, though; Bing was her _responsibility_. And if saving Bing meant leaving all the curiosity of Eli behind, so be it.

If now, in the privacy of her own silence, she wanted to be miserable and remember the dance and Eli, and plan for Bing’s future as though her life depended on it, who would know?

It certainly wouldn’t hurt anyone else.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have heard first-hand accounts of the "good-looking young escort at political functions" thing, alas.


	15. enough to drive happiness away

“_No real confidence could ever subsist between them again.”_

_i._

“You know,” Gemma said, running a languid hand down his arm, “The girls and I have an extra sofa in the loft. You’re welcome to crash there anytime you like.” She winked. “And if the sofa isn’t comfortable enough...”

Eli chuckled. Laughter was surprisingly easy to force. He refused to be unsettled by the discovery. “Tempting. But Charlie’s is closer to—uh, my mom. You know.” He leaned against the hard curve of the bench that the dancers had dragged from the sidewalk to the backstage door. Gemma snuck out of rehearsals whenever she could to curl up beside him. There would be no more performances; only drills. Meryton’s thrill was over, but Eli’s—

He was down on his luck, yes, but sometimes Gemma draped her legs over his.

She did so now, and asked, “Have you told her that you’re leaving for good, yet?”

Eli’s stomach twisted, not for the first time that week. The Lucases’ patience in letting their son’s best friend crash in the back bedroom was wearing thin, and he hated to be an imposition. He hated still more to think of leaving James with everything on his shoulders.

(Of leaving Mom without her favorite son.)

“I haven’t,” he said. “But I’m—I’m going to. I just want to try to get set up somewhere that she could come, too.” They were impossible words. He knew that as he spoke them.

“What would the rest of your family do if she went?”

“Go to hell,” Eli said, and then sighed. “I don’t mean that, exactly. Even Dad will need someone to take care of him eventually. Give me twenty years and I’ll return from foreign lands to face his senility.”

Gemma laughed and kissed his cheek lingeringly. “Oh, you poor boy,” she said. There was a little glitter from last night’s stage makeup winking in the hollows of her collarbones.

It was a real pity he hadn’t said yes to the sofa. He was being…prudish, or naïve, or a fool. Maybe some combination of the three. The only undeniable truth was that three weeks had done much for knowing her.

“James knows,” he said. The conversation continued, separate from his thoughts. He’d have to remember that. “I told him the night I decided. Neither of us could sleep.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re not going to hook for Darcy’s godfather,” Gemma said, with a comical twist of her mouth. “You dodged _that _bullet.”

“Only one I dodged,” Eli agreed. He glanced at his phone. “I’ve got to go. Dad should be at the bar by now, so I can have some time with Mom.” He leaned forward, and ran his fingertips over her throat. “You’ve got something there,” he murmured, brushing at the sparkles, and he swallowed hard when she arched her neck under his hand and directed a lazy glance at him.

“See you around, honey.” She sighed. “You know this is our last weekend here. Summer camp’s over.”

James was waiting for him, truck idling, in the mechanic’s lot. To Eli’s (pleasant) surprise, Bing was with him. She pulled him into a quick hug.

“How are you doing?”

“Bitter and decrepit,” Eli said lightly. “How are you?”

“I miss Darcy,” she said. “But at least I get to have some quality time with my family.”

Eli bit his tongue, imagining Cal and Harry facing off, _Blue Steel_-style, in matching polos-shirts.

“And James,” Bing added, after a moment, which made James blush furiously as he pulled out of the parking lot. In Darcy’s absence, Bing had been visiting the Bennets almost daily, softening the edges of the Eli’s departure. She was even nice to Dad. At least, so James said. She sought out Eli, too, coaxing him away from the Lucases, and Eli, generally very critical of James’ admirers, couldn’t help liking her all the better.

Like Gemma, Bing could do a lot in a week.

It was perfectly apparent that James and she were wild about each other. James all but admitted it, though he insisted that he wanted to make sure of what she was doing and planning about her life before he said anything.

“Maybe after we’ve known each other for a few months,” he said.

Eli would have thought that sensible, once. He was all screwed up about time, now.

Bing chattered the whole ride home. Only it wasn’t idle chatter—she was a lyrical storyteller who found joy in even ordinary things and ordinary Bennets. It made Eli wonder whether he’d been too dour in choosing the apocalypse as his thesis topic.

The whole thing seemed perilously close to being silly, lately. Then again, when they’d dropped Bing off and returned to the old, gray house, he thought that apathy was exactly what his family had to give him.

He had tried very hard to end his world.

James shut off the truck but didn’t get out. “Where are you going to go?” he asked, like he was a kid. Like he wasn’t older than Eli.

“I haven’t decided yet,” Eli said, still clinging to his apocalypse. “I...I feel like I need to get out of town for a little while. Clear my head.”

“Yeah.”

“Things are going well with Bing, right?”

James nodded. “She’s great.”

The walk up to Mom’s room was the longest in Eli’s memory. Her door was half-open, and when he stepped in, she put down the book she was reading at once.

“It’s still a little yellow and green,” she said, with a nod towards his face.

He ran his hand lightly over the remains of his bruise. “Thanks, Mom.”

“Come here,” she said, patting the chair beside hers. Eli went and, almost impulsively, took her hand in his.

“I’ve called the Gardiners,” Mom said, unexpectedly. The Gardiners meant Aunt Molly, who was Dad’s younger sister. She was formidable; a favorite of her nephews, and dependably effective at getting Dad in line. “Molly’s coming to stay with us for a little while.”

“Why?” Eli asked. His question died in his throat when he saw the tears in Mom’s eyes.

So much for apathy.

“Because you’re leaving,” she said, and he wondered why he hadn’t known that _she_ would know.

Eli bowed his head. “I just...I’m sorry.”

“It’s OK,” Mom said, lifting her hand to his cheek. Not the bruised one; the other one, which still burned under her touch. “I want you to go. Because if you leave now, you might come back again. If I ask you to stay...”

She loved him best. She’d always loved him best, and it wasn’t _right_, but it was also all he’d ever known.

“I’m glad you didn’t agree to that bullshit deal,” Mom said. “I know you’re a looker, but I’d never have spoken to you again.”

Eli laughed. If the laugh contained some vestiges of a sob, Mom didn’t point it out. “Yeah. Have to keep my pride intact somehow, I suppose.”

“I wish I could give you a little money,” she added, but Eli shook his head.

“I wouldn’t take it.”

Which left only one option; one that didn’t carry with it much intact pride at all.

He walked back to Charlie’s alone. Before he’d left, he’d told the younger boys he was leaving. Mark and Cody had shrugged reliably, and muttered farewells. Oddly enough, Levi had seemed the most cut-up about it.

Charlie was in the backyard.

“I need to talk to you,” Eli said, just as Charlie said, “There’s something I need to tell you.”

“You first,” said Eli. He was asking for a loan; he wasn’t eager to spit the words out.

“I know you’re looking for a way out of town,” Charlie began. He was shuffling his feet awkwardly. “I, uh...I’m going to New York myself, and I need someone to share an apartment for the six-month lease.”

_Holy… _“That’s nice of you, man.” Eli rubbed the back of his neck. He hadn’t even known Charlie was leaving. Charlie hadn’t said a word, before now. “But...I do not have that kind of money.”

“No, no—” Charlie waved a hand. “That’s the thing. I’ve been...researching. Secretly.” He grimaced conspiratorially. “I, uh, maybe found you something too. A job. In the City.”

Eli gaped. “You’re kidding me.”

Charlie shook his head emphatically. “My dad, actually. The connection, I mean. His most successful college friend is the principal of like, this Manhattan prep school, and they have a lot of summer tutoring gigs. It could turn into something long-term, too, if they like you. Rich, yuppie kids who can’t pass English? You’d do great. He put your name forward, because…”

“He’ll do anything to get me out of his house?” It seemed impossible.

“No,” Charlie said. “You’d be _good _at it.”

Eli wasn’t known for his patience, but patience didn’t matter when practicality had extended such a hand. “I don’t—” he shook himself, trying to let it settle in. “I don’t know how to thank you. Or…your dad.”

“No need.” Charlie waved a hand. “If it doesn’t work out, it’s fine. July and August are as good as set, at least, and that’ll get you started! They—my dad, I mean—thinks you could get to six months without any problem.”

“Why six months? That’s weird, for a lease.”

“Is it?”

Eli changed the subject, since he didn’t know anything about the New York rental market. “Not to do the whole gift horse thing, but, what are you doing down there? This came out of nowhere.”

Charlie’s gaze away from him. “Shit,” he said. “I don’t know…how exactly to say this. Don’t take this the wrong way.”

“I obviously will.”

Charlie shoved his hands in his pockets, squaring his shoulders like he was ready for a fight. “After you—made your feelings clear, I...gave Tatianna Collins a call.” He held up a hand before Eli could say anything. “No, no. Not to be...black-tie-event-filler or whatever. I know I don’t have your chiseled features; you don’t have to point it out. But I minored in poli-sci, and I’ve done some lobbying…and I figured there’d be hell to pay if she left town empty-handed. Dude, I’m sick of Meryton too.”

Eli recovered his powers of speech after a long moment. “So this instant job is for that pompous dick?”

Charlie looked unhappy. “Just because it wasn’t a good fit for you doesn’t mean there isn’t honest work to be done.” He held up his hands. “Look, I swear—you won’t have to have anything to do with them. I just want you to share the apartment. You can do your own thing, get all the breathing space you need, even make a little money.”

“Yeah, the two dollars I’ll have left over after paying for rent,” Eli grumbled. He was bowled over, nearly, by Charlie’s admission...he’d always thought Charlie had too much good sense (his parents notwithstanding) to be swayed by popular opinion, to be a _mercenary_.

But people had been disappointing him, lately; this shouldn’t come as a surprise. And he couldn’t afford to pass up something that was a readymade escape. It was only six months, if it even lasted that long. Mom would want him to. And James, after all, had Bing.

“You said the job was mine?”

Charlie nodded. “As long as you ace the interview.”

_ii._

“You know,” Fitz reminded her, “You don’t have to do this.”

Darcy pinched the bridge of her nose. Maybe that would make the words stop swimming in front of her eyes. “Yes, I really do.”

Live off a trust fund, with a great many cares and all the wrong kinds of freedom…or throw yourself into a largely thankless climb through the ranks of the law, beginning as a lowly first-year, earning your keep like everyone else.

The choice was an obvious one, wasn’t it?

The sleepless hours and stacks of assignments had certainly muddled her self-starting principles a bit.

Sundays were days of reprieve, or ought to be. Two weeks in, work had managed to encroach anyway. After church with George and lunch with Fitz, Darcy couldn’t afford to leave partners’ emails unread.

Fitz ran both hands through his hair, making it even more of a glorious halo than usual. “Darcy. You look like _deathhh_.”

“I’m listening to George play, and answering messages!” Darcy defended herself, gesturing at the piano. George’s sonatas _were_ calming; so that was halfway to relaxation, right?

Fitz rolled his eyes. “George and I hung out here for three weeks, waiting for your return so that we’d have someone to boss us around, and now you’re here and you’re just...toast. Burnt, crispy, being strangled by invisible electrical coils, judging from the look on your face …”

She threw a pillow at him. “I’m not too tired to make you shut up.” The screen glowed painfully bright, and she closed her eyes for a moment. Had it really already been a week since George’s graduation? Had she let the heart-bursting pride in everything he’d done pass too quickly? Would she ever hold onto a memory for long enough again? It made her tired in a different way.

So did the only memory that seemed to stick these days…Eli. Darcy surrendered her iPad for a moment to the sofa cushions and buried her face in another throw pillow.

Like clockwork, George stopped playing. “Are you thinking about Eli again?”

How the _hell_ could George know?

“Careful,” Fitz said. “She’ll throw something at you.”

Darcy sat up. Her hair was probably wild, broom-like with the static that had appeared in every baby picture. “For all you know I could be mulling over the giant merger I’m working on. _Also_, and _unrelated—_I should never have told either of you about him. I swear, you two are the _worst_.”

George grinned. He still had a little gap between his front teeth. It had been wide in childhood, and was narrowing as he got older. He got up and came to sit on the other side of Darcy, so that she was effectively trapped between him and Fitz and their too-wise glances.

“I want to meet him,” George said.

“He hates me,” Darcy said, plucking at the hem of her silk pajama top. Pajamas, at two o’clock in the afternoon! If anyone other than George or Fitz could see her... “And I...hate him.”

No one looked convinced. Including Darcy, she found, catching sight of herself in the long mirror on the other side of the music room.

“For Pete’s sake,” Fitz said cheerfully, keeping his exclamations humorously innocent, since George was present. Fitz loved to dabble in wholesomeness. “How could anyone hate you?”

“Easily,” Darcy said. She dropped her head on George’s shoulder, and he patted her hair. “I know you are both well aware of my reputation for being the prickliest, haughtiest bitch in existence, so.”

“We know you better than anyone, and _we_ like you,” George assured her. “Which is _why_ we need to talk to this Eli guy. Can we at least see a picture?”

“You two are acting like the girlfriends I don’t have,” Darcy said. “I mean, except for Bing.”

Fitz snapped his fingers. “Dude. Bing _totally_ has a picture of this guy. Let’s ask her.”

Darcy stiffened, actively panicking now. “No, please. Please don’t. I need to have my confidants separate from each other,” she said, trying for a smile. She hadn’t told them much—if anything—about the Bing angle of this problem, or of her intentions to separate Bing from the Bennets as soon as could be possibly accomplished. It was important, too, that George never find out about Gemma’s presence. Fitz knew about _that_ piece, but not that Eli and Gemma were apparently...something.

The gray dread she’d pushed away came rolling back, and she sighed. So many secrets. So may sharp little lines of unexpected pain.

“Fine,” Fitz agreed, deadly serious. “But you have to admit you don’t hate him. Because I’m not buying that shit for a second.”

Darcy thought of Eli. The witty twist of his lips; the golden glints in his dark eyes. The way his arms felt around her.

“I don’t hate him,” she murmured.

If only it were as simple as that.


	16. hope was over, entirely over

_“Anxiety under this suspense was, of course, more painful.”_

_i._

Aunt Molly told Eli to come home. Not for good, mind you—she and Uncle Will expressed their full support for the New York plan—but for the last week he’d be in Meryton.

“And you,” she added, shaking a finger in Dad's sullen face, “will behave.”

Eli appreciated her efforts. Whether said efforts made the week actually bearable was another matter.

Still, he was occupied. There was the inevitable, humbling busywork of a long farewell. Eli packed his clothes and books, padding his misshapen duffel bag with little odds and ends the younger boys gave him as going away presents.

“Can we come visit you?” Levi asked. Levi had taken to hanging around the door of Eli and James’ room.

Eli tried to imagine keeping track of Levi in a major metropolis, then shuddered the thought away. “Maybe.”

After Aunt Molly and Uncle Will arrived, Mom was unflaggingly cheerful. Eli wished he could take the cheer at face value. He knew better.

At least James was honest—but that just stung in a different way. In all of this, Eli hadn’t accounted sufficiently for what it would feel like to leave _James_.

“Do you really think they can’t live without you?” Uncle Will inquired gently, when he and Eli were on a meandering walk around the back field.

Uncle Will would have been Eli’s favorite uncle even if he had a hundred. He was a quieter force than Aunt Molly, but no less formidable.

“I want them to,” he answered, after mulling it over for a moment.

“First they’ll survive,” Uncle Will said. “Then everything will settle, and they’ll go back to living. People are resilient, Eli. Even yours.”

“Like cockroaches,” Eli suggested bitterly, thinking of Dad.

Uncle Will guessed the thought. “Hey. He’ll miss you too.”

Eli wanted to say, _I hate him_, but what came out was, “Am I like him?”

Uncle Will had stopped, hands in his pockets, to closely examine a nodding stalk of goldenrod. “Still grappling with the age-old question?”

“Yes. Inquiring minds of kids with shitty fathers want to know.”

“We’re all like each other,” Uncle Will said, with a shrug. “You don’t have to live your dad’s life.”

The week played itself out. Gemma left, and somehow, when the moment came, Eli didn’t kiss her goodbye.

“There was so much more I wanted to do with you,” Gemma mused, in the undertone she favored, when Cody and Levi had been distracted by Denny and the other girls.

“You can come to New York and visit my charmingly cramped studio.”

She laughed, hair dancing over her shoulders. Eli wasn’t sure if love could_ be _love this soon, but he didn’t have much to compare it to. “I will always want to visit you,” she said. “As long as you make it worth my while.”

Then she was gone. Eli chewed his lip and wondered why he hadn’t just made a goddamn move.

At home, the atmosphere was heavy with the knowledge of his impending departure. Dad had been subdued to glares and muffled swearing by Aunt Molly, but he still made meals and evenings unpleasant. Eli gave notice at the garage, at the library, and realized he had far less roots here than twenty-five years should have created.

Of course, all the roots that mattered were at home.

The day before he drove down with Charlie, Aunt Molly handed him two hundred dollars and wouldn’t take no for an answer. “You’re leaving because Joel is being an idiot,” she said, like he didn’t know. “But you’re also interviewing for a job, and you need to have a suit that didn’t come from Salvation Army.”

Aunt Molly could be surprisingly threatening. As Eli had long discussed with James, all they needed was for her to move to Meryton and manage Dad. But of course, such a plan would never fly with Mom.

For Mom to even call Aunt Molly, the stakes had to be dire.

Eli tapped his fingertips against the bruise around his eye.

“They’re staying until Tuesday,” James said, as Eli finished the last of his packing. Eli knew this, but the point was, they were staying longer than he was.

Eli slipped his laptop into its case. “It’s only six months,” he said aloud, as much to himself as to James. “If they even hire me.”

“It’s OK,” James said. He was smiling. James smiled when he was hurt.

Eli stared at the mess and tumble of his life, there in the middle of the bedroom floor, and tried to think of how to fix it. Trouble was, he couldn’t. The mess would remain where he left it, at the center of everything. “You know I’ve always wanted…since I was like, five, to buy a house for just me and you and Mom?”

James leaned against the wall, folded his arms over his chest. “I know.”

“But see, that’s the terrible thing. Because there’s four more of us. There’s Dad, and Mark, and Cody, and Levi. There must be something wrong with me.”

“It’s complicated.” James’ face twisted as he said it.

“It’s not, really. Our family’s screwed up, me included. Only you aren’t.” Eli sighed. “You’re too good. And I’m selfish, and that’s what this, right? I’m leaving because I’m an insufferable prick.” He swallowed. “Or I’m leaving because it’s the best thing for everyone. I don’t think I’ll know which it is until I’ve done it.”

James nodded. “Maybe you’ll buy some actual suitcases while you’re gone, at least.” Half of Eli’s belongings had ended up in doubled garbage bags.

Eli allowed himself to laugh; James had shifted it back to humor for the moment. “Yeah. And at least you have Molly and Will around for a bit.” He smirked, waggled an eyebrow, tried for happiness. “And Bing.”

James’ face fell. Eli’s hopes fell with it. He swore softly. “James. What’s going on?”

Their room, he realized suddenly, look bare. None of his books cascading off the desk and shelves. None of his clothes spilling over the edge of the dresser. The part that looked emptiest was this view: James, alone.

And now something was wrong with Bing.

“She’s leaving.”

“Well, I mean, this is her brother’s home,” Eli interjected, as if blind explanations could make some good come of this. “Her family’s from Boston, right?”

“She’s moving down to Manhattan for the rest of the summer. Internship that’s very likely to turn into a job...”

“She told you this?”

James shook his head. “Cal did, actually.”

“I will tear him limb from limb.”

“Eli, it’s fine. He texted me to let me know that Bing was—”

“I don’t give a damn what he said. Did you talk to her?”

“I sent her a text. She didn’t reply.”

Eli was dumfounded. “Dude, we just saw her, like, yesterday. She was totally fine. This happened when, sometime this morning?”

“She’s leaving tomorrow.” James ran a hand over his jaw. “I wasn’t going to tell you.”

“Why the hell not?” Eli asked, but he already knew. _Because I’m leaving_.

James turned to him. He was smiling again. Always smiling. “Eli, you’re doing this. And it’s good. And Bing...”

“...is going to text you back. Or call you. Text her again. Right now.”

“Dude, I’ll deal with this in my own way,” James said. There was a faint edge to his voice, and Eli shut up for a minute. “Cal was perfectly cool in his texts. He was heading down to the city too, and mentioned that Bing was starting this internship she’d applied for a while ago. Darcy hooked her up.”

Eli grinned fiercely, without humor. “I’ll bet she did.”

James sat down on his bed at last, clenching the quilt in his fists. “This is why I didn’t...look. I’m just going to see where this goes, OK? I told you, so I’ll keep you up to date.” He dropped his head a little, chin tucked against his chest. “I don’t know why I’m taking it so hard.”

“Because everyone seems to be leaving,” Eli said, and this time, it didn’t feel so much like emptiness as it did like guilt.

All things considered, then, it wasn’t only Dad’s fault that his last day sucked, actually. Eli thought first of going to Netherfield and demanding a reckoning from Bing—and more likely, from the absent Cal or Darcy, who were absolute bastards and were almost certainly behind whatever had gone wrong.

But it was James’ life. James’ life—all of their lives—always went to shit because some over-eager family member got involved.

And Eli didn’t want to be like Dad.

Uncle Will found him in the evening, out in the yard, away from the clatter of dinner dishes and television.

“Pretty awkward, right?” said Uncle Will, with his usual perception.

“Yep,” said Eli.

“So,” Uncle Will said, after a pause. Just letting Eli stew amongst his feelings; not pushing or demanding anything. “You’re going to love New York. And you’re going to get the job.”

“Thanks for the suit money. Your idea?”

“Hmm.” Uncle Will smiled, not conceding. “Might even land that teaching position you’ve been hoping for, earlier than you expected. You’ve always loved explaining yourself, and you’re pretty damn good at it.”

Eli never knew what to do with compliments, as much as he always claimed to want them. “Hard to say at this point. But thanks.” He racked his brain; he shouldn’t waste the opportunity for one last good conversation with Uncle Will, but he was muddled by a lot of things at the moment. James. Bing. Mom. Dad. Gemma.

“Can I just give you a bit of advice?” Uncle Will asked.

Eli broke a twig off of one of the bristling bushes that ranged along the driveway. “Sure. Not like I’ve got a father up to that particular task, right?”

“With that warm encouragement,” Uncle Will returned, with a slip of a grin, “I’m going to give you a couple bits. First: stay in touch. However it works.”

Yeah. He’d probably be calling James every single day. Any therapist would say they were codependent as hell, or whatever the clinical term was. “I’ll handle it.”

“Second: I’m sure it was fun, but you should probably let the thing with Gemma Wickham go.”

“What?” Eli stopped short. “You didn’t even—how do you know about that?”

“How long have you known your two youngest brothers?” Uncle Will asked, chuckling. “They put _People _magazineto shame.”

“I mean, duly noted that I need to kick their asses.” Eli crossed his arms. “So, why?”

“You have too much good sense to ignore advice just because you’ve been given it,” Uncle Will said. “So use that sense. I think she sounds very, very charming. Take time to consider your next move anyway. That’s all I’ll say.”

“I’ll think it over,” Eli agreed. “I don’t have any reason not to trust her. Apparently five minutes listening to Cody and Levi babble is enough to crack her case. Guilt by association.”

“I didn’t say anything about guilt.” Uncle Will looked as mild as ever, but also almost grave. “Only about sense.”

_ii._

Fitz’s friends came through. He told her at George’s graduation that Bing could have an internship with practically the same start date as the one that had fallen through.

Darcy texted the news and walked Bing through confirming with the museum. It was all very businesslike and Darcy knew she was being heavy-handed. She called to offer friendlier congratulations.

“Where are you living?”

“Oh,” Bing said vaguely. Her spark was a little dimmed over the phone. “I actually...I’m just going to stay with my cousin—the one that works at Milbank—during the week. She isn’t home a lot. And then I’ll go to Boston for the weekends.”

“Every weekend?” Darcy was surprised. “That’s—a long commute.”

“It’s six months of my life,” Bing said. “Not the rest of my life.”

“Yes, but if it turns into a job—”

“It’s fine.” Bing cleared her throat. “I’ve got to go—still fielding movers.”

Puzzled as she was by this, Darcy's excitement was...well, just that. _Excitement_, at the prospect of meeting Bing for dinner after her first day of work.

Bing was waiting for her at Herald Square. It had seemed like the quintessential Bing place to meet, under the shadow of Macy’s and alleged miracles.

No miracles tonight. Bing waved hello, looking wan. When Darcy hugged her, she burst into tears.

The world warped around them—a thousand voices and bodies, all moving at restless, calculated speed—these were things that never entered into Darcy’s worries. She and her thoughts could disappear seamlessly in these comforting crowds. It was only when Bing was melting helplessly in front of her that she felt the weight of everyone, and every barred escape.

Somehow, Darcy found an empty bench. She had Bing’s wrists pinned in her hands, and realized belatedly that that might not be a comforting touch. Why didn’t she know how to—never mind.

“Bing,” she said, “What happened? Are you—are you sick?”

Bing dabbed at her eyes and shook her head. Through wet breaths, she said, “I’m…I’m just—I’m fine.”

“You’re clearly not.” Darcy would have given anything for a car. But she hadn’t been thinking, she hadn’t been prepared to whisk Bing away. Sending a text felt too callous at the moment.

“I’m just tired,” Bing said.

“Bad day?” Darcy’s mouth was dry. “At your internship?”

“No.” Bing swallowed another sob. “It’s great. It’s…perfect.”

Darcy lifted her arm like a stiff, wooden thing and rested it over Bing’s shoulders. That was what Bing would do, if Darcy was the one crying. Wasn’t it?

“I’ll call a car.”

“We were going to get dinner.” Bing made _dinner _sound like execution.

“We need to get you out of here,” Darcy said firmly. This was the pit of Manhattan, anyway. The air smelled foul.

When they were in the car, Bing began to talk at last. It came in little starts and stops of anguish. “Cal—this came up abruptly, you know? I hadn’t had a chance to talk about it that much with...James. He knew I wanted to do the internship. I just...I was going to call him or go visit and tell him that I got it, but Cal happened to talk to him first. And he—” She buried her face in her hands.

Darcy scraped her nails over the leather seat. “What did he do?”

“Cal said he got really angry. He just—he snapped at him, and…he said if I was leaving, he didn’t even want to _see_ me.” She pushed a limp frond of hair away from her damp cheek. “We weren’t—we didn’t have any—agreement. But I thought…I didn’t think I was betraying him by leaving!”

“You weren’t,” Darcy said icily. “This was your plan all along.”

“I wanted to tell him,” Bing whispered. “To tell him he could…come and see me. I don’t know. You were right. I don’t know what I’m doing.” She hiccupped through another sob. “It didn’t seem like him at all.”

No, it didn’t seem like James. It _did_ seem like Cal, to lie, and it certainly was like Bing, to think that everyone was telling the truth. Cal hated the Bennet boys with a passion. Bing could never understand that.

Darcy thought she could.

“Has he texted you?” _Lay the foundation_. It was the same, really, as examination at trial.

Bing nodded. “Once. Just to ask what was going on, but—I spooked. I didn’t write back. Yet.”

“Good,” Darcy said firmly. “You don’t need that kind…erratic energy, angry one minute, according to Cal, and trying to pump you for information, the next.”

Bing needed this—the internship, and freedom, and for Darcy to do what Bing was too kind to. Bing had been in love before. She’d be in love again, if love was what this was.

“He was probably just upset. I mean, it’s not like Cal would…make something like that up, but maybe he didn’t understand—”

“They aren’t like us,” Darcy said. The _us _was another betrayal. “He can be sweet, I agree. But they have a lot going on in their family. A lot…of bad shit, to be honest. Space isn’t going to do you two any harm. He’ll make it right, if that’s what he wants.”

Bing twisted around to look at her. “So you think he really did it? Got made and—and chewed out Cal over me leaving?”

“You said it yourself,” Darcy said, hating the way her skin prickled. “It’s not like Cal would just make up a story like that—right?”

Bing leaned her tear-stained cheek against the window. “No, he wouldn’t.”

“Space, Bing,” Darcy said, in the most soothing tone she could muster. “It’s going to be OK. You want some dinner? Food will help. Ramen?”

“OK,” Bing whispered.

One more blow. One more cruelty. Darcy shifted her gaze away from Bing, so she didn’t have to look Bing in the eyes as she struck it. “I need you to promise me something,” she said. “Don’t text him back. Alright? Just...don’t. He should be the one to text you, not asking what’s going on, but apologizing. If he’s not willing to do that, then we’ll talk about what the best way to proceed may be.”

Bing was silent for a moment. Then, wordlessly, she nodded. Darcy tried not to feel like she’d just killed something. But the truth was, if Bing made a promise, she was likely to keep it. And if she broke it, she would always confess.

_That way you’ll know what’s going on._

Darcy imagined standing in front of a judge, saying _nothing further, your honor_, because the case was won.


	17. crossed a little in love

_“It had better have happened to you; you would have laughed yourself out of it.”_

_i._

Charlie bought him a gym membership.

“I can’t pay you back for this,” said Eli, finding that the words were no easier to say the second or third or fourth time. Charlie had shrugged.

“I need to be in shape for this campaign shit,” he said. “And I have zero hustle. You know that.”

Eli didn’t, anymore.

His workout clothes were practically rags. Pilled nylon; sweat-stained tees. Details like that hadn’t mattered in the garage when he was lifting homemade dumbbells.

This was a different world.

He’d known _that_ as soon as he saw the City’s prehistoric spine rising against the Hudson. He was not a total stranger. In seventh grade, he’d seen Times Square. The Empire State Building.

But he hadn’t belonged, and hadn’t wanted to.

Now there was a need. _His _need; it only ran one way. The City would swallow him whole without noticing. It fell to Eli, whether he could weave between its silver teeth.

These were his thoughts, on the drive down. He had been trying to look towards the future.

The Mercedes Club—where Charlie has enrolled them—had a rowing machine. Eli was torn about it. On the one hand, it was a great workout. Nothing he could have replicated at home. On the other, it was unshakably _Cal_.

Eli plunged forward and back. The future was slipping again, giving way to the past.

James had texted him an hour into the ride down from Meryton.

_Guess who I just saw?_

_Bing? _Eli couldn’t help hoping.

_Close. _A beat, then another message. _No. Cal. He was picking up some stuff and going back to Boston for a while to work w/his dad._

_OK_, Eli typed, and waited.

_He said Bing was doing well._

_Good??_

James started typing, then stopped, then started again. Finally:

_She has a boyfriend._

Eli’s stomach dropped. _Shit. I’m sorry. Shit._

_It’s fine. They’ve been long distance I guess._

_He’s a dick. Ignore him. He’s totally lying. _

_I don’t think so._

He had told Charlie. Possibly, that was a mistake. You shouldn’t confide in people you no longer understood.

Here was what he _did _know about Charlie, despite everything: he was patient. Ambitious. A little lacking in scruples.

_And you?_

“James is just suffering as usual,” Eli said.

“Something happened with Bing?” Charlie had known them a long time, after all. He knew their shit.

Eli said, reluctantly. “Her asshole brother told James that she’s seeing someone else.” Then he shook his head. “He’s lying. There’s no way she would—”

“Would move on?” Charlie shrugged. “I don’t know, man. People do. She was...they were all kind of in a different world.”

True enough, Eli thought now, climbing off the rowing machine. Charlie was going to buy him new gym clothes, probably. They’d been here four days; he gave it a week.

Charlie was waiting for him when he came out of the showers. “You look good,” Charlie said. “Well, you would with new kicks.”

Eli smiled wryly.

They took the subway home. Home was four days old, and so didn’t feel like home at all, but it was a neat little place. One window faced the street.

No roaches. No rats. There were a couple of gingko trees outside. 

Charlie said his agent had called the apartment a _flex_: a one-bedroom you could make into almost-two. Eli’s head was chockful of bits of information like that now; local versus express train, the best coffee cart (according to Charlie), what not to eat on the street (falafel, again according to Charlie—but Eli thought it smelled amazing). You used a metro-card for the subway, but you never called the subway the _metro_. That was D.C.

“I’m sorry you had to do all the legwork of finding a place yourself,” Eli said. “Like, going to all the showings. I could have helped.”

“Ah, but you had a black eye until a few days ago,” Charlie said. “They’d never have trusted you.”

Charlie had moved his stuff down a week before Eli joined. Eli’s stuff had come with them on the second trip, loaded into Charlie’s car.

That had been a bad morning: the goodbye.

Five minutes before he walked out the door, Levi had shoved his phone in Eli’s face.

“Look at Denny’s story from last night,” he said, simmering with all the excitement hot gossip had to offer. “That’s _Gemma_. Making out with _Matt King_.”

“The Syracuse quarterback?” Cody had elbowed in, trying to get a look. Eli had turned away, just as James said, “_Levi_,” disappointed, and Dad said, “Serves you right,” half-under his breath.

The city seemed full of Gemma. They were an easy commute to Lincoln Center. He’d forgotten to ask if she’d ever danced there, or if she wanted to.

But Eli had an interview tomorrow, for a job that was more like a lifetime than anything else. He had better things to think about than a girl he’d only known for a few weeks. It didn’t matter that he’d liked her, better than he’d ever liked anyone…Gemma had made him no promises, and he hadn’t _quite_ made any to her.

Had Bing promised anything to James?

Eli drew in a breath. Remembered the first day, the whirring engine of the Bentley, how wrong it seemed. Nothing fit.

Bing and her brothers, the summer and its sorrows, Gemma and Darcy—it all reached deep into Eli and split him open. The fault-lines that had betrayed him had been largely his own. The effects of pressure on a heart that was too nervous to move. The best lacked all conviction, if Yeats was to be believed. Eli was not the best. Not even close.

He couldn’t save James from Bing, or Gemma from Darcy, or himself from himself.

He woke early, the morning of the interview. Ate cereal, poked at the spiky potted cactus he had brought with him. James had said it was more Eli’s than his.

_I’ll probably kill it if you leave it here._

Eli had kept the damn thing alive for three years.

Charlie was already gone. A pot loitered in the sink, oatmeal clinging to it like pale lichen. They had had takeout every night, so far, but Charlie seemed devoted to a healthy breakfast.

Eli bid farewell to the glow of his laptop, despaired of getting his hair to lie completely straight, and slammed out of the door.

Morning in New York wasn’t the mad rush he’d expected, in some ways. The subway platforms were quiet. Everyone on their phones. He was on _his _phone.

It was a quarter to eight. No new messages from James.

Eli held his breath, and hated Cal. He considered hating Bing, but that was more complicated.

The train roared through. The silent platform woke, and shuffled, and left emptiness behind them. 

Hunsford School had actual ivy clinging to its brown-brick walls, and a brass plaque winking from amid the sun-limned emerald leaves.

It was eight-thirty. Eli chewed his lip for a while, staring at that plaque. His shabby portfolio—a gift from Mom when he finished college—was clutched in his hands. 

He felt young, younger than Levi, even. That would not do. He squared his shoulders.

“The door’s not going to open itself,” said a voice behind him. Despite the jibe, it was a friendly voice.

Eli turned to face the newcomer. The guy was tall, about his age, dark-skinned, with an abundance of curly hair and a charming grin. He was wearing an argyle sweater vest. It looked right on him.

“You my nine o’clock interviewee? I didn’t get a name.” The grin flowed effortlessly into a grimace. “Bureaucracy.”

“Yeah, I think that’s me,” Eli said. “Eli. Eli Bennet.”

The guy’s eyebrows climbed up, and he looked inexplicably delighted, like Eli’s name meant something to him. The look was gone in a moment, though. “Frederick Williams,” he said, stretching out a hand. “But I prefer to go by Fitz. I sit on the board. Apparently that makes me a greeter.”

_Williams_. That was Darcy’s last name—weird coincidence—but it was common enough and Eli felt like he could safely assume they weren’t related. “Nice to meet you.”

“Spoiler alert: this isn’t really an interview.” Fitz waited for Eli to look shaken, and chuckled. “Principal—also on the board, obviously—knows someone you know, or something. Job’s yours, dude. Just going to get to know you a bit.” He gestured down the herringbone walkway. “And to make up for the fact that it’s stupid early, I promise I won’t ask you anything important, or sports-related.”

“Great,” Eli said. “Left the baseball cards at home.”

“Perf. Want to get some coffee? There’s fifty thousand coffee shops in the city, and one of them is really good.”

“Starbucks?” Eli asked innocently.

“Oh, OK, you’re funny. This is very good.” They fell into stride together. “Where are you from, by the way?”

“Upstate. We don’t have Starbucks up there, actually.” Eli sighed. “We have to grow the beans ourselves, and we just don’t have the climate for it.”

Fitz’s coffee shop didn’t disappoint. Eli ordered a latte and learned his way around a proper napoleon pastry. He also learned a good deal about Fitz. Fitz had two cousins with whom he was particularly close, and shared a place in Midtown with them since his only family home was in Connecticut.

“That and Block Island,” he said. “Good WASP-y strongholds. Imagine how well I fit in.”

_Money_, Eli realized. _More money than I’ve ever had or will ever have._ But Fitz was unassuming, even if the Rolex on his wrist was probably worth more than the sum total of Eli’s life.

“Teaching must be your long-term plan, then,” Fitz was saying, stirring his americano. “I actually teach some history classes at Hunsford. My degree’s in East Asian studies, and I wanted to put it to use.”

Evidently, it was teaching for teaching’s sake. Eli could respect that.

Fitz turned the conversation expertly to Eli’s life and interests. Eli wasn’t a liar by nature, but being a Bennet, you learned to gloss over the unpleasantries. He told a few humorous anecdotes about his brothers, avoided the subject of his parents as much as possible, and expounded a little on his thesis.

“Apathy and the apocalypse, huh?” Fitz said, dunking a piece of biscotti.

“Apathy is sometimes the last level of desperation,” Eli said. He always had to forge past a paralyzing layer of self-consciousness when talking about his writing; it made his ears burn, but he had to keep going. The value of his work was like a secret he kept from himself; if he didn’t accept futility as reality, he could survive. “I think—well, if the world was going to end, I wonder if some people would just stop caring. That’s how I got the idea to explore it, through poetry.”

“You don’t strike me as the apathetic type,” Fitz said.

“I could be, if I cared enough,” Eli quipped.

Fitz laughed. “This is too good,” he murmured, almost under his breath, and Eli was left wondering again what he meant.

_ii._

Bing did not come to visit. Darcy asked twice, then thought it would be desperate to ask again. It had probably been desperate to ask twice. She found herself biting her nails—a sure sign of stress—when she thought about it at work.

They had been inseparable during the years they shared in college. Even during law school, Bing popped by to New York every available weekend, always accompanied by mysteriously lumpy care packages.

Inevitably, the lumps were fresh-baked cookies.

Darcy felt a little short of breath, and made a manicure appointment for Saturday afternoon, so that she would leave her nails alone.

Phone-calls with Bing were unnaturally clipped, too. Darcy tried hard to infuse a smile into her voice, so that she didn’t sound forbidding. Darcy was always forbidding when she was hurt.

Bing said the internship was going well. Everything was fine. Good. Great. They were colorless words; Bing had never seemed _subdued_ like this before.

But it was Bing’s life, and who was Darcy to ask other people to show their happiness more plainly?

She had never liked to have that asked of _her_.

Still, in the absence of Bing, she was glad for Fitz and George and the Park views. She’d bought this apartment at twenty-one; it had been the hub for her and George ever since. The smothering pity of the Connecticut relatives, warranted by her teenage instability, had outstayed its nonexistent welcome.

_You’re so young_, they used to say, tut-tutting over the independence of funds and management that had been left to Darcy in her father’s will. _If Kenneth had known he’d be gone so soon_—

But few were brave enough to finish _that _thought, and after various thwarted efforts, only Chris Burgh remained a boorish interferer.

A week after Bing had all but stopped communicating, Fitz met her on the way home. She took a car halfway and walked the rest; it was a beautiful evening. Darcy loved the city better than the rest of the world, because it let her be invisible.

“You look happy,” she said, when Fitz joined her at Bryant Park.

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” he said, taking her purse and slinging it over his shoulder.

“It’s an alien thing,” she said. “Too much cheer. I don’t know how you do it.”

“Well, I was reminded today that the universe just lines itself up in the most amusing ways.”

“Is there some sort of rogue eclipse I didn’t hear about?”

“I wouldn’t call that_ amusing_. OK, maybe I would. But it wasn’t that, no.” Fitz was wearing an argyle sweater vest, of all things, and he actually looked like he belonged in it. Next he’d start wearing bowties, or something, and Darcy would have to put her foot down. He wasn’t the umpteenth Doctor. “Aren’t you going to ask me what happened?”

She glared at him. “I don’t like to be led blindly into questions. So no, I will not take the bait you’re so clearly dangling. If you want to tell me, I’m assuming you will.”

“You are like a walking deficit of fun,” Fitz teased. “OK, so. Do you remember how I told you about that new tutor Hunsford is getting?”

“For whom you drew the short, welcome committee-ing straw?”

“Yes. Met him today.”

Darcy felt a strange tingle on the back of her neck. Probably because Fitz was so obviously delighted with this news, for no reason she could guess. It seemed directed at her.

“What did you think of him?”

“More to the point, what do _you_ think of him?” Fitz beamed. “Oh, wait, I already know. Eli, Darcy. It was _Eli Bennet_.”

Darcy actually stopped walking. She hated to show a strong reaction to anything, but this was so unexpected, so wickedly coincidental... “Are you _sure_?”

“Positive,” Fitz said. “He’s a smart dude. Witty. Hot, to be frank. I can definitely see the traces of your fangirling.”

“Fangirling?” Darcy said, too disgusted to be wholly innocent.

“Montgomery Clift? Alain Delon? Lee Jun Ki? I can keep going.”

“Don’t.”

“I’ve known you a long time,” Fitz reminded her, as though she was in danger of forgetting. They were almost home. “Just letting you know, in case you need an excuse.”

Darcy lifted an eyebrow at him. Very forbidding, intentionally so. “An excuse to do _what_, exactly?”

Fitz threw his hands up. “I don’t know! Show up at random times. Meet me for lunch.”

“You will keep this information to yourself,” Darcy told him severely. “I should never have confided in you.”

Fitz chuckled. “You don’t mean that.”


	18. periods of dejection

_i._

It was September, and Eli was almost happy. He worked with half-a-dozen students, six days a week, and found that they liked him, even if they didn’t always listen to him. They were kids. Arrogant and timid, lazy and anxious, all afraid of failing in one way or another.

Eli could understand that.

He didn’t miss—

He missed James, and Mom, and he missed little fragments of the rest of them and the rest of the old world, but it was a cautious, incomplete feeling. He lived well enough under starless skies, amid chorusing traffic. For the present, it was interesting and overwhelming. Charlie’s interventions didn’t stop with the gym; he dragged Eli to shows and upscale sushi joints and gastropubs on their evenings off.

Not that Charlie had that many evenings off to speak of. He had new suits and new responsibilities, along with his newly forming muscles. He seemed happy, which led Eli to guess that Charlie had value to the Christopher Burgh machine.

Charlie was allowed to be happy. He was allowed more freedom than Eli, in Eli’s own mind. Eli had to cordon off honor, honest, dependence, depression. If Charlie could be blithely guiltless—

Eli shouldn’t stand in his way.

At least he had Fitz, now. They’d often crossed paths over the summer—Fitz had meetings at the school—and when the academic year began, Eli’s hours shifted to accommodate class schedules.

Fitz became a frequent companion. It had been some time since Eli had made a new friend.

Of course, he spent a lot of time bitching. He could be honest with himself about that.

“I don’t know how anyone can deal with the glad-handing shit,” Eli said, over lunch in Fitz’s oak-paneled office. Hunsford treated its board-members-daylighting-as-history-teachers well. “Look, if people really dislike one another, I can’t abide any situation that forces them to pretend ignorance of that dislike.”

“Hmm,” Fitz said. “Try being the token adopted kid _and_ the token black friend.” He reached for a California roll. “People are delighted to flex their atrophied ‘woke’ muscles. Ask how I’ve gotten in touch with my roots. I usually just grin and bear it, so that they’ll get the hell away from me. Works about half the time.”

Eli conceded the point.

“You, on the other hand, are a chameleon.” Fitz gestured expansively. “All this old, white money wouldn’t know the difference if we put you in Gucci and dropped you somewhere swanky.”

“Didn’t know people still said swanky,” Eli jibed.

“Bringing it back.” Fitz chuckled.

Fitz had hit closer to home than he knew. Hadn’t Tatianna’s proposal amounted to the same thing? Eli must have one of those faces, lucky enough to look like success with no substantiation. 

_One of those faces_.

He should call home more often than he did. But for the first stretch of time, he knew Aunt Molly and Uncle Will were there, and then he heard that James was spending a long weekend in Boston with them.

Eli chose to believe that everything was fine, which was why he kicked himself when James called him at eleven o’clock one night.

“Well, this is like old times,” Eli said, rolling over in bed and propping himself up on elbow. “Everything OK?”

“I just needed to talk,” said James. “Sorry. I woke you up, didn’t I?”

Eli smirked, even though his brother couldn’t see it. “It’s fine. Old times, like I said.” And he was a light sleeper, here. When one siren fell, another rose, shrieking, to take its place. 

“You know how I went to Boston a couple weeks ago?”

“Yeah.” James had gone to visit the Gardiners. Eli hadn’t paid much attention. “How was it?”

He could hear James clear his throat. “I should’ve told you sooner,” he said, and Eli could fill in the blank after that. _But you were gone_.

“What happened?”

“Don’t be mad.”

Eli collapsed onto his back and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Dude. I’m not going to be ‘mad.’ How old are we, nine?”

“I texted Cal...they’re from Boston, you know?”

Eli knew.

“Anyway, I texted Cal and said we should meet up for drinks.”

Eli felt a twist of dread in his stomach. James didn’t always know to stay down when he’d been kicked by life. That was why Eli shouldn’t have left him on his own. “And?”

“We did. He was...he seemed cool.”

There was a long pause; Eli almost wondered if they’d lost the connection. He said, hesitantly, “Seemed?”

“Yeah. Seemed. He actually invited me to come and visit them the next day—it was a Sunday. They’re on other side of Boston, of course. Nice neighborhood.”

“Of course,” Eli said, and didn’t try to keep the bitterness out of his tone.

“He said...he said Bing would be there, and she was...” James’ voice kept trailing in and out.

_You’re gone_, Eli told himself again. _You’re gone_. He couldn’t fix this, because of that.

“I was pretty excited,” James said, which was probably an understatement. “I mean, of course I didn’t dare ask if she was still seeing someone, and I was still cut-up about that, but anyway, the whole no-texting thing aside, I thought maybe there’d just been a misunderstanding and it would be OK. If I could just see her, you know?”

Eli shut his eyes. There was nothing to be gained by staring up at the ceiling. Anyway, he knew where this story was going. “I’m assuming that didn’t work out.”

“When I went to see Cal at their house...dude, it’s a _house_, let me tell you. Made me feel about two feet tall. I—” he coughed, or swallowed a sigh, or something. “She wasn’t there. And it was like a mask had come off. Cal was not at all like he’d been when we were at the bar. He made it pretty clear that it was awkward, having a hick like me tracking mud on the carpets or whatever, and he...Bing _knew_ I was there, he said, she just hadn’t had time. Spending the day at Darcy’s summer home or something. I don’t think she was…I don’t think she cared.”

The last word was so hollow Eli could feel it rattling in his own chest. “Damn it,” Eli said, “Damn _them_. I’m...sorry.” The apology wasn’t his responsibility, but he carried the weight of it all the same.

“Pathetic, right?” James said. “Me, I mean. I missed you here, telling me to get my shit together.”

Guilt swirled like nausea in Eli’s stomach. “You OK now?”

“I’ve seen the light,” James said. “Just like you said I should. Cal’s...just what you always said he was.”

“A dick.”

“Yeah. That.” He could hear James blow out his breath. “And Bing...”

“Is apparently a heartless—” He stopped short. He couldn’t call her a bitch, because he felt like that would hurt James more. And it would hurt Eli, too. He’d wanted to believe in Bing. Still, apples and trees. She was related to Cal. “Look, man, it sucks, but if this is how they are—and from all accounts, it is—what’s the point? It’s not the right fit.”

“That’s why I called you,” James said softly. “It’s been a few weeks. Guess I just needed to hear you say it.”

Eli realized that his thoughts had swallowed all other sounds, even the sirens, because he’d been so caught up in talking to James. Now, the world rushed in again. “I’ll come back,” he offered, irrationally. “If you want.”

“No, no,” James said. “I’ll be fine. I’ve picked up some extra hours at the garage. Dad is doing OK. Mom misses you, but things have settled down. We’re fine. I won’t want to talk about this again, I think. Just had to get it off my chest. Bye.”

He hung up. It was before midnight, still.

Eli stared at the ceiling.

“You’re quiet today,” Fitz said, over their next lunch. Eli hoped that sharing lunch was something Fitz genuinely wanted to do, rather than an act of mercy.

“Family shit,” Eli said, crumpling a napkin in his hand. Those words summed up most of his life, he thought, and he hadn’t been able to escape it completely.

He wasn’t sure if he should.

“Tough,” said Fitz, with sympathy. “Not to mention dealing with these kids.”

“I don’t mind the kids,” Eli said, because he didn’t. His students’ antics didn’t even begin to rival those of Cody and Levi. Then, too, it brought the dream of being a teacher a little closer than it had ever been. He couldn’t help but be stirred by that.

“You still need to lighten up a bit,” Fitz said, looking thoughtful. “My cousin and I are grabbing drinks tonight—Friday celebrations, you know—and you should join us.”

Eli noted the speculative gleam in Fitz’s gaze and rolled his eyes. “Let me guess,” he said. “Your cousin’s a _she_.”

Fitz just laughed.

_ii._

“I could come with you,” George suggested.

Darcy paused in the middle of slipping in an earring. “We’re going to a bar, George.”

“I have a fak—”

She wheeled on him. “Go on. Finish that sentence.”

George looked up at her from under his hair, which was fanning over his forehead, in need of a trim. “I’m joking.”

“Good.” Darcy reached for her purse. “I’m not going to stay out late.” She glanced at the clock, then amended. “Well, not too late.”

“Why are you going? You and Fitz could just come here.” George didn’t whine, but he still could infuse his tone with something plaintive and coaxing. Darcy steeled herself against his efforts.

“Sometimes Fitz wants to do things he considers fun. He thinks it’s good for us.”

“Good for _you_,” George murmured, and Darcy couldn’t disagree.

“We’re going to the Island tomorrow, remember?” she said, elbowing him gently as she walked past. “You will have us all to yourself. Very _fun_.”

“Yeah, whatever,” George said, and then yawned, ridding himself of petulance. “It’s fine, Darth. I’m going to go practice some more.”

Darcy smiled indulgently—at least, as close as she came to indulgent. “Don’t wait up.”

She passed her phone from hand to hand as she waited on the curb for her driver. She rarely drove the Bentley in the City, but the memory of it made her think of Bing. It seemed like weeks since she had talked to her, or even texted, but it hadn’t been. It had been three days.

_That’s just your guilt_.

Sins were never singular. Darcy’s proved no exception.

Biting her lip, she scrolled down. Two weeks ago, a text from Cal. 

_That James guy is coming around tomorrow. Bing’s home for the weekend. Can you get her out of the house?_

Darcy had canned her weekend obligations, gone to Boston, appeared with flowers and a dinner reservation, pushed past Bing’s reticence, and insisted that they celebrate.

It was unlike her. It was, in fact, like something Bing would do—kindly and innocently.

And Bing, innocent of all conspiracy, had given in.

Dinner had been pleasant. Bing didn’t know to be angry at Darcy, and she forgot a little of her somber regrets. She had laughed, and Darcy had laughed with her, and for a few short hours Darcy had thought, _she’ll be alright, she’ll move on, this is worth it_.

Cal had texted her again, afterwards. _Thanks_. And then, _miss you_, as though playing God with his sister’s life was something that should bring them closer together.

Darcy hadn’t slept that night, after a late return to New York. She had been sick at the sight of those words; at the sound of them imagined in her ears. Cal was being cruel for the wrong reasons; Darcy was being cruel for the right ones.

That made a difference; it had to.

She put her phone away standing on the curb now. The car pulled up and the driver opened the door. Darcy watched the hubbub of traffic through the protective tint of the backseat window. She was glad that no one could see her.

Fitz had chosen an English pub with plenty of dark, exposed wood and decorative oil lamps. To Darcy, it was just as unpleasant as every other kind of bar—blurring faces, blaring music. She squinted across the room, catching sight of Fitz at last. He waved.

“Over here!” he shouted, or at least, that was what she read on his lips.

Darcy started to weave her way towards him, and crashed into Eli Bennet’s arms.

Her hands were pressed against his chest. His _firm_ chest. Darcy shut her eyes fervently, both to scold herself for allowing that to be her first observation and to pray for some alternate universe to open up and swallow her.

It shouldn’t be Eli Bennet, but it was, and—_damn _Fitz.

_What a little shit_, Darcy stormed inwardly. It didn’t help.

“Oh my God,” Eli was saying. His hands gripped her shoulders, steadying her from tripping, but then he recovered himself and let go of her as if he’d been burned. “Darcy?”

“As you see,” she said. He made her want to smile, of all things. She’d missed his skeptical mouth, she’d missed his eyes, she’d missed his thick, rumpled hair. She had missed him a way that was fair to...no one, really, least of all her.

“What are you doing here?” And he did that thing with his eyebrows, that Eli Bennet _thing_.

Inwardly, Darcy howled. Aloud, she said flatly, “I’m here to meet my cousin.”

His face started to clear.

“Adopted,” Fitz explained, ambling up behind him and propping an elbow on Darcy’s shoulder. “Secret weapon.”

Darcy fixed him with a glower which said, as best she could through one look, that he would be _dealt with_ later.

“Williams,” Eli said. He looked briefly like a man being led to the gallows, and then, incorrigibly, a smile slanted his lips. “I should have guessed. It’s a small world.”

“It is not a small crowd,” Darcy said, looking around with her best attempt at aloof, vague annoyance. “Fitz, is there a patio in this godforsaken—but not forsaken, apparently, by anyone else—place?”

They followed Fitz outside. He’d ordered drinks; three scotches. Darcy sipped on hers and said nothing.

“Well, well,” Fitz said. He was the only one of them who looked relaxed. Eli was still amused, but that was not the same as being at ease.

Darcy hoped he wasn’t angry. For some reason, she just hoped —

“We’re acquainted,” Eli said, for Fitz’s benefit.

Fitz waved a hand. “Dude, I know. That’s why I had to see you two in the same room. I knew the day I met you...after what I’d heard—”

Eli’s eyebrows shot up. “You’d heard about me?” He turned to Darcy, eyes sparking with something she couldn’t decipher. “I’m baffled. In what way was I _memorable_, Miss Williams?”

“I remember pretty much everything,” Darcy retorted. It was probably an unwise thing to say.

“Of course,” Eli said, smile unchanging. He turned back to Fitz. “Your cousin—I feel like someone has to say it. She came to my town and _hated_ everyone there. Probably more than every_one_. Every road, every tree—”

“Oh, I liked the trees,” Darcy interrupted, but Eli held up a hand.

“The manifesto is not yet complete. Every tree, every wayward pebble, and _especially_ me. So.” He rested his elbows on the table—Darcy ignored the contours of his forearms with some difficulty—and said, “Fitz, I’m going to need another drink.”

Fitz was laughing, _merrily_. Darcy wanted to slap him. “Better than I’d hoped,” he said. “Oh, come off it, Darcy. Everyone knows you hate wayward pebbles.”

“Then don’t be one,” she said, finishing her scotch rather more quickly than it was meant to be drunk. She was (slightly) flustered.

Eli seemed impressed by that. “If you’re posh enough, does it stop tasting like floor polish?”

“If you’re posh enough,” Darcy said, struggling to be composed while her throat burned terribly, “Floor polish scotch is merely another of life’s simple pleasures.”

“I’ll remember _that_.” He stared at her inscrutably for a moment, and she found that she was holding her breath. Then Eli stood up, grinned at Fitz, and said, “You know what? Never mind about that other drink. I’ve got to dash. Early morning tomorrow.”

“You mean you need some time to come to terms with the state of my family relations,” said Fitz, like Darcy wasn’t sitting _right the hell there_.

Eli laughed. “That too.” He saluted Darcy mockingly. “Good night.”

She stared at him, straight-faced. Had she forgotten how to smile? “Good night.”

Fitz was staring meditatively into his drink as Eli disappeared. Darcy had been ready to turn on him and take him to task, but she found all her anger gone away. All that was left was an ache in her chest. Watching him had been an all-too-familiar torture, reminding her of how it had felt when they danced together. She thought, now, of leaning closer, kissing the taste of scotch off his smirking lips.

“Interesting,” said Fitz.

“Good God,” said Darcy, summoning sufficient anger for a glare. “What the _hell_ were you thinking?”

“Thinking that I wanted to see what you were like together.” Fitz chuckled. “I like him, Darcy. One of those people you could see every day and not get bored of. You clearly feel the same, only...”

“Please don’t be ridiculous,” Darcy said crisply. “I don’t have feelings about things like that.”

_About Eli Bennet_.

Her guilt about Bing came reeling back, suddenly. She had done everything in her power to separate Bing and James, and she had fervently believed that it was for the best. She’d known that nothing good would come of associating with the Bennets. So why was she so secretly pleased that Fitz and Eli liked each other? That she’d seen him again? Why was her heart still beating faster than it ought to?

_You were cruel, and right, in Bing’s case. You have to be the same for yourself._


	19. the greatest of favors

_“Who could have imagined that we would receive an invitation to dine there?”_

_i._

Eli had a thesis to finish.

Surrounded by a sampling of the world’s top universities, the prospect of keeping up with online courses felt more galling than it ever had in Meryton.

Only his writer’s block remained unchanged. There it was again: the plague of a blinking cursor on another blank page.

It wasn’t just the City, Columbia and NYU, that made it harder than usual to write about poetry and the end of days tonight.

Had he lied when he begged off on account of an early morning? He’d have stayed, but for her coming. Eli mulled, then decided he didn’t care. She didn’t deserve explanations.

He wasn’t angry at Fitz. It had been...a shock, yes, but Fitz seemed to genuinely think that Eli and Darcy were cool with each other. That was another point of interest; how the hell could Fitz have a favorable impression of Eli, when he had only learned of him from Darcy?

Obviously, she had an ulterior motive.

Less obvious: what said motive _was_.

Maybe she pitied him. Eli gritted his teeth against that, stood up from the small desk by his bed, and shoved open the window. The rush of air was stale, and the noise swelled tenfold. But he wanted something. Some difference, some change in his own mind.

Someone was smoking weed on the sidewalk.

Defeated, he shut the window again.

A humiliating memory pushed itself forward: this was his first time even _seeing_ Darcy since the dance at the Lees’. That night was fixed as a turning point in his memory for many things: a tableau of Bennet tragedies, splashed across a few fateful hours.

Eli closed his laptop, and practically threw himself over his bed. This was his life. Charlie could try and dress it up as much as he wanted; Eli stayed poor. He had more in common with this empty, secret place than he did with what Charlie wanted or what Darcy was. The drying rack shoved up against his bed because he wanted to save quarters at the laundromat. The books piled everywhere, the dust piling everywhere else.

This lonely darkness was the only thing that reminded him of the old house, other than himself.

As it turned out, none of these late-night ruminations prevented Darcy from showing up the next day at Hunsford School.

“Is Fitz here?” she asked coolly. She was always dressed in bland, sharply tailored clothes—this time, a crisp gray suit that was probably wickedly expensive. Not that he cared, but he was pretty sure he’d never seen her in a bright color.

“In his office,” Eli informed her. He had decided a while ago that smiling charmingly at her was the best defense; there was a flicker in her eyes that suggested she had no idea what to do about it.

She paused, looking up at him. She didn’t have to tilt her head back very much, what with her high shoes. “How is your family?”

Salt in the wound, then. It _was _one way to handle things. Eli almost respected her for being ruthless. “They’re very well,” he said, which was probably a lie. The fact that he _didn’t_ know was something like a lie in itself.

“Good. I mean...” she paused. Her blunt eyelashes swept down over her cheeks. He remembered Gemma doing that; it used to drive him mad. (Was he allowed to be driven mad by Gemma? Was he over Gemma? Had he any right to be invested in her still? He wasn’t certain. Men were fools, Mom always said).

It was different when Darcy did the eyelashes thing; almost as though she was hiding confusion. The next instant, she settled her gaze on him again. “How do you like the City?”

He scoffed softly. “You didn’t even know I was here.”

She pursed her lips. “Fitz told me.”

“Hmm. Fitz has told you a lot.”

Just when he thought she was completely closed-off, her face went a little more expressionless. “Fitz is like a brother to me,” she said. “You’ve met him. I’m sure you can understand why.”

Eli let it go. He stepped a little closer to her, because standing there, with her immaculately manicured fingers curved around the handles of her designer purse, she looked too composed. Getting in her personal space might unsettle her. And damn it, he _wanted_ to unsettle her. Wanted to see the girl who’d tried to crush Gemma, who’d sneered at him and his family—wanted to make sense of it all. Darcy, with her grim, dark eyes, made it strangely difficult to do so.

He saw her draw a breath, quick and tight in the shoulders. “I asked if you liked the City.”

She smelled like lilacs. Too perfect. Was this how she broke people down? Not the sort of villain who smiled.

“I like the City,” he said. He liked anything that let him live. He liked trees to climb, long roads to run along, words that made him laugh and stab and feel things best not said aloud.

So, sure. He liked the City.

“Good.” Her voice was a little raspy, now. They’d used the same words over and over again in this conversation.

“Am I interrupting something?” called Fitz, breezy and cheerful as always. It was then that Eli realized, in his quest to unsettle Darcy, he had come close enough to her that it probably looked suspicious, and their faces were tilted towards each other in a way that looked too much like—

“Nope,” said Eli, and stepped back.

“I came to grab lunch with you. Had a client meeting up this way that ended early,” Darcy said. “The partner had other business. He wants to join up at one.”

“Eli?” Fitz asked. Eli shook his head, winning smile firmly in place.

“Sorry, too much work. Catch you tomorrow.”

He told the whole thing to Charlie over a dinner of Chinese takeout that night. Charlie insisted on paying, and bought loads of it, soup dumplings and slender purple eggplants tossed with spiced lo mein. Eli could have eaten it forever.

“Dude,” Charlie said. “Maybe she likes you.”

Eli almost choked on a noodle. “Are you shitting me? Darcy. Me. For one thing, I’m pretty sure the universe sent her out without wiring _emotions_ in correctly. She can’t relate to other human beings in any way, not to mention_ that _way.” Which was harsh, but whatever. It had been a long day. “Secondly—she hates me. She’s weird as hell around me, because I disgust her so much.”

“For a smart guy, also blessed by being hot—” Charlie shook his head. “You sure can be dense.”

Eli threw a fortune cookie at him.

Before there could be any more discussion on the subject, though, the buzzer rang. Charlie flushed. “Uh, Eli...there’s something I’ve been meaning to… ”

“You’ve sold your soul to the devil,” Eli said, with a sigh. “Surprise me.”

Words aside, nothing prepared him for what happened next, though. Charlie unbolted the door—and in sprang Tatianna Collins.

She threw her arms around Charlie, crushing him in a kiss that left Eli’s appetite somewhere wandering the outer cosmos, and then she turned on Eli.

“Eli, first let me say...let me assure you that water keeps flowing under the bridge even when...” she gazed heavenward... “Even when there is a _lot_ of water. Let me assure you, this is a _new era_.”

Eli was unable to communicate how very assured he was. He turned to Charlie, who was dabbing lipstick off his face with a napkin.

“Chucky said he was going to talk to you about this, but I couldn’t wait.”

Eli wasn’t sure whether he should say, _“What in hell?_” first or _“Chucky?_” so he stayed silent. Flabbergasted, actually, might be a better word.

“I was going to tell you,” Charlie said, beet-red. “I really was.”

“I’m sure,” Eli said, finding his voice at last. “Although, with something like this, telling me about it wouldn’t have made much of a difference.”

Charlie looked away. Tatianna had missed the point of the words entirely. “Right?” she exclaimed. “What consequence? Surprise!” She sat down at the table, picked up Charlie’s chopsticks, and started tucking into his dumplings.

Eli had had a lot of experience in concealing abject horror. It was harder than usual.

“Tat, would you—” Eli was pretty sure Charlie was about to say_ give us a minute_, but Tatianna waved a hand, paused eating, and said, “Sorry, I’m starved. But of course! The invite! The _deets_.”

“Invite?” Eli was lost.

“Tat, _please_,” Charlie pleaded, and after a long blank look, Tatianna rolled her eyes indulgently. “Fine, babe. I’ll let you tell him.”

Charlie tugged at his collar. Expensive shirts weren’t doing him a lick of good at the moment, Eli thought, with some spark of satisfaction amid the whirling chaos of being turned upside down by Charlie’s willingness to..._adapt_...yet again. “I know you’re not interested at all in the campaign...”

“God _knows_ why,” Tatianna huffed, with a dark look at Eli.

“...but, um, look. Things have been going well.” Charlie put an awkward hand on the Collins’ shoulder, and cleared his throat. “I might be getting a promotion if the Rose Gala this weekend comes off OK.”

“Good for you?” Eli could manage to infuse a lot of sarcasm in three words, and he did. Chinese takeout was sacred. Their apartment was supposed to be sacred. Rose Galas and Tatianna Collins were not supposed to have a place here.

And yeah, maybe he should have expected Charlie to get more and more involved with Burgh-world, but he hadn’t expected—

_This_.

“Here’s the thing, Eli.” Tatianna put her hands on her hips—to awkward effect, since she was sitting down. “Governor Burgh—well, soon-to-be, hopefully—has heard a lot about you. I mean, you were like, a _shoe-in_ for a _super important job_. Remember?”

Eli did.

“He found out that I know you,” Charlie said. “You know, after Tat and I...”

“Yeah, great, please don’t tell me anymore,” Eli said. He felt, suddenly, like he was talking to Dad. _I don’t want to know who you drank with, Dad, just how many. How many drinks? Can you tell me? Do you need to me to call someone—_

Anyway. Shut _that_ off.

“Future Governor Burgh isn’t used to getting turned down,” Tatianna said, finishing Charlie’s portion with an incongruous combination of gusto and disapproval.

“He’d like to meet you,” Charlie said. “He’s...kind of insisted on meeting you. It’s really important for my job, and I was going to lay all this out, I just didn’t get a—”

“And then I thought I’d just pop by!” Tatianna interrupted impatiently. “Stop dragging your feet, boo.”

“I’ll Facetime him,” Eli said, folding his arms over his chest and staring Charlie down. “Will that get you the promotion you so badly need?”

More shifty glances. Even Tatianna was starting to look embarrassed.

Suspicion, to Eli, was second nature. “OK,” he said. “Cut the shit.” Fury, sudden and ultimate, was making him feel giddier than shock had. “What did you do?” The question was aimed squarely at both of them. Charlie had lost the benefit of any doubt.

Charlie said, “You’d better come clean.”

Tatianna huffed, but then complied, even having the grace to look shamefaced. “When I was...trying to recruit you,” Tatianna said, shamefaced, “I needed the cred. So...I maybe told Fut—”

“If you call him Future Governor Burgh in my hearing again, I’m going to poke this chopstick through my eye socket,” said Eli.

Tatianna glowered at him, but it was a pretty meek glower. “I know that I told you Mr. Burgh would provide you everything you needed, _including_ an auspicious background. But...in the honor of greater hopes for the future, I may have told _him_ that you were the son of wealthy socialite parents, so that he’d be...thrilled to have you as a—”

“On-demand escort? Yeah. Got that. You just lied about the white trash part.” He snapped his gaze to Charlie. “Did you know about this?”

“Afterwards.” Charlie wouldn’t even look at him. “I swear, Eli. It wasn’t…”

“Is that why you wanted me to move to New York? Because she convinced you that maybe this story could play out for both of you?”

No answer for a minute. It was like all the oxygen in the room had been sucked out. “Not...entirely,” mumbled Charlie.

Eli’s throat felt hot, but he almost laughed. “Goddamn it,” he said. “So now you’ve got to save both your asses and have me show up wrapped in a tux with a bow on top? So Burgh doesn’t find out that you were scraping the bottom of the barrel?”

“He thinks you’re related to the Vanderbilts,” Tatianna said. “He thinks if he can get to you himself, it’ll change your mind about the whole…being a face for him_._ We have plenty of influencers, but we really need a blue-blood. Some people…still like that.”

Eli ran a hand through his hair. “Wow. So you rode Charlie in on a bullshit line about tapping the ruling class. I hope you know how despicable this is.”

“It’s a great honor,” Tatianna snapped, some of her old pomposity returning. “Future Gov—”

Eli picked up the chopstick and pointed it at his eye. Charlie waved a hand.

“Eli, I’m sorry. Shit, dude. I’m—I really am. If you come to the gala, I’ll never ask you to do anything again. Just come and say no, you’re not interested, and then…it’ll all be over. He'll get off our backs. Please.” Charlie said. Eli thought he’d never heard him sound so desperate. Or so much like his father.

He bit the inside of his cheek until it hurt. Pride was one thing; money another.

Eli didn’t have money. Charlie, on the other hand, had given him a way out of Meryton when he needed it. Charlie’s dating life, Charlie’s professional life—those were his own business, even if they broke something between him and Eli, too.

At the end of everything, he still owed Charlie, strings or no strings. Eli couldn’t afford to skip out on this debt.

“I’ll go to your goddamn gala,” he said. All of a moment, he was very, very tired. “And then—I’m done, man. With all of it.”

_ii._

He looked good in a proper suit.

She’d known he would, all broad shoulders and trim waist under black and white and a bowtie. She could tug at the satin ends so that the tie hung open around his throat. In a moment, she would.

He was smiling, he was smiling _at her_, and the next thing she knew Darcy had her fingers threaded through his, pulling him away from the crowd, away from all the blank and unimportant faces.

In the library, Eli crushed her against the books. The wide hardcover spines ranged along her skin through the shimmering fabric of her dress. He had his hands on either side of her waist, and Darcy smiled against his lips, kissing and letting herself be kissed, moving her hands in his hair and—

“Darcy,” came George’s whisper, and Darcy sat straight up in bed, immediately grateful for the darkness that would hide her blushing warmth. “George,” she said. “What’s going on?”

He shuffled his feet in the doorway of her room, head down, hair in his eyes like always. “Nightmare,” he said.

She could tell from the tone and the head down and the shuffling that he was embarrassed. Like he was too old for nightmares, as if Darcy would ever say that.

George’s room was on the first floor of the apartment; it must have been bad if he had come up to wake her. “Let’s go downstairs,” she said, reaching for the sweater on her bedpost. “I’ll make some tea.”

_Forget, forget_, she told herself. _You have no business having dreams like that._

Ten minutes later, she had a blanket over their knees and a mug of tea for George. Anyone _but_ George would have been surprised by the unnaturally maternal display.

“Is it the plane?” she asked. George nodded tightly.

He might as well have been nine again. She remembered the first time he had told her about what he saw, how the plane burned and their parents burned with it. George always dreamed of a jetliner, even though the real thing had been a twin-engine vanity project, built and flown by Dad’s pilot friend.

_I’m hiding under the seat_, he’d told her once. _If they just would get under the seats, they’d be OK._

Sometimes, Darcy—at fifteen, or nineteen, or twenty-two—had wanted more than anything to beg him to stop. She had dreams too, and she couldn’t bear to hear George describe it aloud, the heat and the smell—metal and flesh—and the way they called for him until they couldn’t call anymore.

“It’s not just the plane,” George said softly, after a moment. “I’ve been...I know I shouldn’t be, but I just, I can’t stop thinking about _her_.”

Darcy went cold—chest, hands, lips. “She’s not here, George. She’s never—”

George leaned his forehead against his hand. Slim hands with defined knuckles, a pianist’s hands. That was George. Talent, almost incredible talent, from the youngest age. Darcy would lose him to Juilliard in another year. Though in one way it was only a change of location, in another, it would be a change of essential companionship. He’d be here, but not here. Consumed, at last, by people who could really understand him.

She was glad that she and Fitz had convinced him to wait, to waste a little time skateboarding and gaming and blaring dramas, instead of only slaving over his black-and-ivories.

“I miss her sometimes,” George said, in a voice barely above a whisper. “Is that wrong?”

You could save people, or you could tell the whole truth. Darcy made do. “I’m not the one to ask,” she said, slipping an arm around him. “You know I never think anything you do is wrong.”

“That’s not quite true,” George said, tipping his head back against her arm. He sipped his tea. “I know it was wrong. I’m glad you—”

“We don’t have to talk about it anymore,” Darcy said. “I’m not angry at you. I was never angry at you. Never.”

“Maybe you should be,” he suggested. “I’m kind of...if it weren’t for the piano thing—” and only George would ever say it that dismissively—“What would I even be? I’m not smart like you. I’m a dork. I’m—”

“You’re my brother,” Darcy said, with almost awful firmness. “That will always be enough.”

George grinned despite himself, gap-toothed and five years old in the half-light. “OK,” he said, closing the book on tortured conversations. Darcy would let herself be grateful, later, but for now she couldn’t even show relief. George could never know. “Have you finished your tea?”

“No,” he said, and then, coaxingly, “Can you do the thing?”

Darcy bit her lip. For George, she let her parents be perfect, even if, for her, they were only ever gone. “Dad’s a lawyer for reason, you know?” Present tense. The thing that George wanted was present tense.

“Yeah.”

She felt him relax, and she smiled in the dark.

Foolish, that smile, when she was in pain.

“He gives really good advice—” And terrible advice, that George did not remember, like _If you don’t make a big deal out of race, nobody else will_—“But he doesn’t always follow it.”

“Hmm.”

“He says that you shouldn’t ever do something in public that you don’t already know how to do. Which is why I learned how to ride a bike in front of the garage, instead of with Anna. Remember Anna?”

“The Kirches?”

“Yeah. They went to our church back in Connecticut.” Darcy rearranged the blanket. “Anna was learning how to ride her bike, but I told her I already knew how. And then I went home and practiced for like, two weeks.” Darcy laughed a little. “I have this scar on my palm from it, too, see? I was so uncoordinated. But Dad always laughs when he hears that story, because it’s just like he says. Don’t show people what you don’t know. Go home and learn it.”

“That’s smart,” George agreed.

“Sure is,” Darcy said. “Except, like I said. Dad doesn’t always follow his own advice. Like the time he took a client fly-fishing.”

She’d told the story many times.

George never tired of it.


	20. this worst kind of pride

“_In vain have I struggled. It will not do; my feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”_

_i._

The rest of the week was weird. At first, Eli decided that he couldn’t exactly tell Fitz about what had gone down, because Christopher Burgh was Darcy’s godfather. In short, the whole world was interrelated and gone to hell.

Charlie was meek and polite. Eli missed him, missed the calm practicality and camaraderie they’d shared. What he had thought to be a loss—Charlie taking the Burgh job in the first place—hadn’t really been the loss at all.

Eli had still been holding on to hope.

Tatianna Collins, then, was the roadblock their friendship couldn’t recover from. Eli had too few people he cared about in his life to hold grudges interminably, but he’d never be able to forget what had happened. And looming ahead of him, plaguing him every moment, was the knowledge that he had to run a society gauntlet.

So it was that he told Fitz after all. He laid the whole thing out like a deck of dog-eared cards: _Look, man, this is my shitty life._

“That blows,” Fitz said, frankly. “I had no idea—damn, how did we end up meeting when everyone else in our lives knows each other? Too much coincidence?” He shrugged. “Guess some people call it fate.”

“_Some people_ are morons,” Eli retorted. He sighed, resting his head on his hand. Another brown bag lunch, but thankfully, no sign of Darcy. “So, I’m a fake Vanderbilt coming to this dude’s—what is he, your uncle?”

“He’s Darcy’s godfather. Patrician asshat, honestly. He thinks he’s her sovereign and she’s his ward, or whatever. I can assure you the feeling is not mutual.”

Eli smirked. “I imagine not.”

Fitz chuckled. “Yeah, and it’s not _his_ event, despite what he might tell you. Darcy would never darken the doors of a political fundraiser. This one’s for charity.”

Eli was used to being on the other side of charity, though he didn’t mention that. Still, he wasn’t sorry he’d told Fitz.

The night of the gala, all such optimism drained away.

“I can help you with the tie,” Charlie said. Eli’s fingers stilled in the tangle of heavy silk. Bennets never wore tuxedos.

“Thanks.” He owed Charlie, even after everything. That was the worst of it.

The venue was a hotel at the hem of Central Park. No great distance in _miles_ from where they lived, but time and traffic didn’t move here like the rest of the world. Eli wasn’t driving, so he didn’t keep track of miles. He was crammed into the back of an Uber, packaged in black and white to serve as some sort of sacrificial offering.

A very inadequate offering. He doubted that he would impress much, even with the Vanderbilt sheen.

He didn’t have enough ego to think differently; he was only half his father’s son. Sometimes that was more than enough.

“We’re here,” Charlie said quietly. The first time Dad had come home drunk and punching, Eli had fled to Charlie’s. And the next time, James, who was fifteen, had knocked Dad out cold in one seminal show of well-timed aggression.

Dad never did it again—contented himself thereafter with being ribald and whiny instead of violent—but Eli never forgot how Charlie hadn’t asked any questions.

He missed _that_ Charlie more than he could let himself admit.

Burgh Tower wasn’t yet complete, Tatianna Collins had repeatedly explained, but the Forrest Hotel was seventy-five years old and had been co-owned by the family since its conception.

She met them at the front steps, ludicrous as ever in a shade of orange that left no retina unseared.

“You look hot,” she told Eli, slipping both hands around Charlie’s elbow. “Not that I’m surprised.”

She must be the Virgil to their collective Dante, Eli supposed. _This way to the first circle. _

The place was grand, and ablaze; gold, mahogany, cream, and banks of identical roses along every wall.

Eli was dazzled because he was human, and he hated it.

There was no sign of Chris Burgh. Eli was only familiar with his belligerent grin on flyers and website banners, but here everyone was milling thickly about, a blur of mirrored men and women as bright as butterflies.

Then Eli saw crimson. There was always one; a woman standing out from the rest, and this one, even with her back turned, drew his eye. Scarlet swathed her in rivers of taffeta—hell, yes, Eli was allowed to know what taffeta was—and split open down her shoulders. There were diamonds falling, there.

Unbidden, Eli’s mind flashed back to Levi, waving the phone in his face the morning he’d left. Gemma, moving on. With some guy. Or maybe it wasn’t moving on, because they’d never really been together.

_So, what are you going to do? Charm some girl at this party, in the hopes that Gemma will see a picture of that_? When had he ever been so disgustingly juvenile?

He must remember to laugh at himself.

The women in the red dress turned. Eli could not laugh; even across the room, he recognized her.

_Darcy_.

Eli cursed under his breath with more surprise than eloquence. She hadn’t seen him. He had—seen her _too_ well, as if it no longer mattered that he hated her.

An uncomfortable thought. Hard to find the irony in it.

He was mercifully distracted a moment later when Fitz came up beside him, breaking free from a gaggle of admirers, godlike in a brocade suit that would have looked embarrassing on anyone else.

Fitz grinned broadly. “Eli! As bad as you feared?”

“It’s not,” Eli lied. To his relief, Charlie and Tatianna had abandoned him. “The champagne alone is half worth it.”

“Only half? A pity. Don’t bash the bubbly till you’ve tried all of it.” Fitz leaned in to add, “Oh, by the way, Chris is in rare form tonight. Since Zoe Saldana cancelled, he thinks he’s the main event.”

“I’m resigned,” Eli said, with a slight smile. He wasn’t, but Fitz didn’t deserve his bad humor. _Meet him and say no to his offer_, reminded Charlie, in his mind. _That’s all you have to do._

“Well,” Fitz said, seeming relieved. “Let me look at you! Damn. At least you clean up nice.”

“It’s rented.”

“So? Mine too.”

“No, it’s not.”

Fitz raised his hands. “Busted. It is not. How could I resist buying this?”

“No idea.” Eli would have dragged his feet with more banter, but Tatianna reappeared, tugging at his elbow.

Charlie, trailing behind her, had at least the good grace to look ashamed.

Getting through the crowd took the better part of a millennium. The prize at the end was Chris Burgh himself, banner-ad smile and all. He shook Eli’s hand like they were making a deal Eli hadn’t agreed to yet.

“Eli Van—or should I say _Carter_. Your father’s a Carter, I hear. You are just the secret the family’s been keeping, aren’t you?”

“Something like that,” said Eli. He thought Chris Burgh looked like a hammerhead shark. His eyes were set very wide.

“I _also _hear you’ve got a steel empire in the works.”

“Must prepare for the dystopia,” Eli said, with a thin smile. A nod to the thesis, good grad student that he was.

“What do you think of the party?” Burgh asked, not letting go of his hand. “I’ll have you know that there is more genuine Swarovski crystal in those chandeliers than in any other—”

“It’s a fine effort,” Eli said, wickedly, “A little…pre-ordered, but we can’t all be Elton John.”

It was satisfying, the way Burgh’s jaw—and hand—dropped. Less satisfying: the next fifteen minutes, during which Chris Burgh and a battalion of logistical details made his case for the party’s size and grandeur.

By the time the offer arrived, Eli thought his debts to Charlie were more than repaid. He excused himself while Chris Burgh was still digesting the hard edges of an unqualified _no_, and took Fitz’s proffered Macallan eagerly.

It went down harder than the champagne, just as he needed it to.

“Holy shit.” Fitz shook his head. “Dude, that was something to watch.”

Eli sipped. He hadn’t known Fitz was watching. “Is he always like that?”

“Yes. But a little...less. Most people don’t criticize his parties. Good on you.”

“Hmm.” Eli glanced around the room. Everywhere he looked, he saw Darcy. Had she noticed him? Did he want her to?

“Darcy hates all this,” Fitz observed, prescient as ever. “Usually she drags Bing along.”

Eli set the glass down. “You know Bing?”

Fitz beamed. “Yeah! She’s a sweetheart. Most genuine person ever. Unlike, you know. Here.”

“She’s sweet,” Eli said, holding back. She _had_ been sweet. Until she’d broken James’ heart.

“Darcy is really a hell of a friend to Bing,” Fitz added, reflectively.

Eli, having no sisters, was unqualified to offer his opinion. “I guess. Darcy kind of leads her by the nose.”

Fitz said, “Actually, Darcy sticks up for her. I know you’re…a little hard on her. But seriously. She helps Bing be smart, you know? Like, just this summer—Bing fell for this guy. It was…a mess. Darcy got her out of it.”

All of a moment, it was like they were alone in the vast, mad room. Eli concentrated on keeping his expression neutral. “That so?”

“Yeah.” Fitz was oblivious; his manner easy and open. “Bing always tries to see the best in people. Hey, so do I. But this guy was...let's say, problematic. Or his family was, anyway.

Eli smiled. Bennets smiled when they were angry. “Did she say what gave her the right to break them up? I mean, I call bullshit. Bing’s an adult. Doesn’t she have the right to be happy?”

Fitz shifted uncomfortably, sensing that he’d hit a nerve. “I—that’s one way of looking at it. Darcy meant well, you know. She did what Bing couldn’t.”

“I’m sure,” Eli said, very quietly. “I’m sure she did. Bing probably couldn’t summon the _courage_.”

“Guess not.” Fitz flicked a finger at Eli’s drink. “You want another one?”

“No, no. I’m good.” Eli stretched his smile to its breaking point. “Did my time. Good to see you.”

He’d text Charlie to explain. Or, no, he wouldn’t. He’d be gone when Charlie got home.

Before Fitz could say another word, Eli cut through the crowd. These gilded lilies were still people; they still moved when someone was threatening to trample them. Eli lost the smile, lost any other purpose than escape.

He pounded down the front steps, and heard Darcy calling his name.

_ii._

Darcy had never done anything by halves. She grew up early, clenched her teeth and her fists when she had to, rarely looked back.

These skills had been invaluable. Now, they were limited. Living in contrast to Bing’s romantic prattle had let her subvert it, but she hadn’t escaped her own heart.

Eli had not stopped at her heart. He had found his way into her very soul, whether he wanted to or not. There was no reason for it except every reason. She could not read his moods or his glances, and so she traced every feature of his face with her eyes.

Not looking back—only trying to be better next time.

When he was with her, she was both speechless and too near speech, as if all the wrong words were ready to spill out and ruin a hope she shouldn’t have.

_What hope?_

Darcy rapped her nails on her desk. Remembered that she was not alone (she had an office-mate as well as a money tree on the windowsill), and stopped the rapping.

She was a lawyer; she knew when she’d been beaten.

The hope knew itself, dangerously.

Of course, there was no _fairness _in it. Someone like Eli Bennet—charming smile, no prospects, dreadful family—had conquered her will utterly, fracturing her usual resolve. She had stepped between Bing and James. She had done what she thought right in _that_ situation.

It was harder, this time.

“Are you alright?” George asked her, at night, over dinner. She smiled wanly at him, distracted—and that should have been warning enough. She couldn’t leave George too much alone. Hadn’t she learned that?

Hadn’t she?

The Rose Gala was on a Saturday. Because it supported one of her father’s old patronages, she couldn’t get out of it. Her godfather would take credit for her attendance, however; he probably called their secretaries individually just to set the dates.

For a man who had his sights set high, he was strangely pedestrian that way. Nothing was beneath his notice if he thought it could be controlled.

Sometimes, Darcy wondered how that friendship had lived. The dreamer and the miser—but both rich men. Comfortable in names and their families, in futures and their birthrights.

So what if Kenneth Williams had seen himself as a savior, while Burgh was a penny-pincher who never grew tired of pennies, no matter how many there were?

Darcy, close to blasphemy, turned the thought away. _Time changes people_, she reminded herself, slipping diamond drops into her earlobes. _You should know_.

It hadn’t taken very much time, though, for Eli to change her.

Let the gala distract her. Let anything distract her.

Her dress had arrived in an enormous silver box. A gift; the strings attached as ribbons. It was scarlet and sleek and swirling around her figure, lush under her fingertips, with a back cut so deep that she practically rolled her eyes. She never wore things like this, but Chris liked everyone to be on theme.

Darcy, apparently, was the thorn stepping out of the rose.

“You look perfect,” George assured her. George didn’t come to galas. Darcy drew the line there, and so while she was texting Fitz to find out his ETA, while she was teetering in sparkling heels under yards of taffeta, George was lying on the couch with a bowl of ice cream propped on his chest.

That made her smile.

“Thank you,” she said. “I will try not to stay too late, but please go to bed on time.”

“I’m _eighteen_.”

She sighed. “I know.”

The ride over, though only a few blocks, gave her too much time to think. At least she wouldn’t see Eli tonight. At least, at least. Although the thought of that was tantalizing—him in the same slick black and white tuxedo he hadn’t worn at the Lees’ party, but that he’d somehow worn in her dream.

Darcy set her jaw, trying not to imagine his teasing mouth open against it.

Fitz was waiting for her on the sidewalk, calm and composed under the flashes of paparazzi.

The guest-list was a little star-studded tonight.

“Remember,” he said, taking her arm, “When there was a rumor that you were dating a black guy—AKA me—and how your probably-racist godfather was certainly freaking about it?”

“Two half-Koreans are just about as much as he can take in one social circle,” Darcy returned, dryly. “Though he conceals that opinion now that he’s running on the Dem ticket.”

“Not the first.” Fitz flipped off one of the cameramen with a cheerful grin.

The rumor about her and Fitz, Darcy recalled, had made socialite news. She wasn’t famous enough for more, which was a relief. Once she’d gone to law school, any interest in her had died away. Heiress following in dead father’s footsteps, check. Teenage crisis concealed or averted, check.

Inside, everything was as always. Dripping chandeliers. Roses packed as tightly sardines. Tables of food and pyramids of champagne glasses. Long mirrors on every wall made the room feel even larger, more dizzying.

And Christopher Burgh was powering towards them.

“Oh, hell,” Darcy sighed. “So soon?”

Fitz, the traitor, melted into the background.

“Chris.”

“Darcy.” He smiled through his teeth. Very white teeth, had Chris Burgh. White teeth, tan face, and a swoop of artificially dark hair. A six-hundred-dollar haircut couldn’t quite make it look real. “I hope you gave the press some time. You know how these little details matter.”

“Not,” Darcy said, “To me.” But she smiled pleasantly enough. “Where’s Andrew?”

“Says he’s feeling sick. Probably in the coatroom.” And that was all the concern that pale, shy Andrew warranted. He was not enough of a son for his father; he never had been. Darcy shifted her eyes downward to hide the fact that her smile was anything but genuine, and moved away.

Andrew wasn’t in the coatroom. He was her parents’ godson—a reciprocal relationship—and they’d known each other since they were babies. Where Darcy flourished, Andrew wilted. Darcy was fond of him because nobody else bothered to be.

Even her affections were perverse. She mingled unwillingly, and had a wine headache before she’d been there an hour. Then, with a shade of annoyance, she saw that Tatianna Collins had arrived in alarming orange, her arm linked with...was that Charlie Lucas? Once again, Meryton had its hooks in her—if only because Charlie had met Tatianna over the summer, and acted on the social climbing instincts that were apparently in his blood.

With a rustle of her skirt, she half-turned—run-ins with the insufferable Tatianna were to be avoided—and stopped short.

_Eli_.

Her dream hadn’t been wrong about the tux.

A shiver ran through her. She was fixed to the floor one moment; the next, she found that her feet still moved perfectly well and she was walking towards him as though she had a right to. It didn’t matter what happened next; he was here.

The whole room, the whole evening: changed.

But before she could reach him, he was hustled off towards Chris.

_You’d better get your shit together_, she reminded herself sharply. _Figure out why he’s here, then _try_ not to make a fool of yourself._

“Fitz,” she said coolly, coming up on him from behind, “Is there something you forgot to tell me?”

Fitz was flirting, and looked regretful at the interruption. “What’s up?”

“Eli Bennet is here,” she said, in his ear. “Didn't know that the Burgh brushed elbows with the Bennets of Meryton.”

“Eli’s a Vanderbilt tonight,” Fitz said, with a low, sardonic chuckle. “He hates it, believe me. It’s...it’s complicated. He’s doing a favor to a friend.”

“Charlie?”

“Yes. I think he mentioned that name.”

So Eli and Fitz talked. A lot. Darcy _had_ known that, but everything about Eli was a revelation. She pressed her lips together. “Part of Tatianna Collins' regime?”

“Yes. But not for Eli. He’s not the bootlicking type.”

“I’m aware,” Darcy said, almost defensively. She drew her brows down. “You should have told me he was coming.”

Fitz leaned in, laughing quietly. “Oh, Darth. This is more fun.”

She would have huffed if she wasn’t a grown woman. She turned on a stiletto heel and left Fitz to his soft laughter.

As luck would have it, Darcy watched Eli across the room all evening, while her blood ran hotter and higher and she played a dozen conversations out in her head, each to no very satisfying conclusion. Was he avoiding her? Had he even seen her? Surely, he must have seen her, in this ridiculously literal dress.

(Had he noticed the dress?)

Eli was talking to Chris. Chris looked shocked. Darcy smiled faintly. Eli might be here against his will, but she had a feeling he couldn’t be easily cowed.

An hour passed. Still no chance to talk to him. He wasn’t coming over; any time she had an opportunity to move closer, he was somewhere else. Purposeful strides had no place at a gala, and this was why. It made distance too great an obstacle.

As always, she could not read him. He might have been angry—he might have been drinking—whatever it was, he had color in his cheeks. After all, he didn’t want to be here. Not like this. A _Vanderbilt_? Fitz might not have told her much, but she knew Eli wasn’t a liar by nature. How had Charlie gotten him into this?

Darcy finished another glass of wine. _Shit_, she couldn’t get tipsy. Not tonight. And now she was just fixed to the floor again.

Eli was talking to Fitz.

(Why did she _care_?)

He was—oh, now he was _leaving_. She had thought that he was moving too quickly before, but now he was slicing through the crowd, shoulders tense. She could see _that_ even from yards away. He was leaving, and she hadn’t even said a word—

Darcy could move a crowd when she needed to.

She needed to.

Eli was on the steps when she burst through the doors, and though she called his name, he didn’t even look back. Thankfully, the paparazzi had dispersed.

The shining finish of the balustrades, the broad steps, the bored chauffeurs standing by the endless parade of SUVs and limousines—Darcy followed him away from all of it.

His long legs covered the ground at a breathless pace. She almost had to run.

He veered sharply right, into some pitch-black alley, and she wanted to tell him, _even here, it can be dangerous—_

Eli was from the country, he wouldn’t know that, wouldn’t know not to rush down into inky darkness, looking like a wealthy drunk.

She knew. And here she was anyway.

“Eli, wait.” Babbling. She was babbling. “Burgh can be an absolute dick, I know. I’m sorry, don’t feel like you have to—”

He turned sharply. It was starting to drizzle. Only a mist, but it made his hair looked more tousled than ever, and Darcy’s heart was pounding.

He didn’t look surprised to see her. He didn’t look _not_ surprised. “You think that’s what this is about?”

Darcy was silent. Eli took another step, and Darcy made a kind of leap.

No one ended a conversation before she was ready to.

Her hand was on his shoulder.

In a moment, her back was flat against the damp bricks of the building, his fingers wrapped around her wrist.

They hadn’t been so close since they danced. He looked angrier now than he had then, but Darcy still drank in the nearness of him, of his anger and his warmth.

A moment in silence, like that. She was breathing hard, and so was he, though (she suspected) for different reasons. Finally, he glanced down at his hand on her, and dropped it.

“I’m sorry,” he said thickly. “I’m out of it, tonight. I just—I’m done. I’m leaving.”

“I don’t mind.” Darcy hated being touched, she always had, but—

Eli’s stare was blank. A muscle jumped in his jaw.

“What did you mean, leaving?” Darcy asked. “The party—I mean, yes, of course the party’s shit, but you shouldn’t…”

“I’m leaving the _job_.” Eli said. “I’m tired of being a puppet for everyone and anyone. And that’s all I’m explaining to you.” The _you_ had a stroke of venom to it that was for her alone. He took a step back. Darcy braced her hands against the wall.

“Don’t go.”

His whole body stiffened. Surprise or something else, disgust or something else, she could never be sure. “What? Why?”

There were a thousand things she might have said. Cold, hard reasons; pleasant platitudes meant to defuse and melt away. But Darcy had never done anything by halves.

“Because I’m in love with you.”


	21. not more eloquent on the subject of tenderness than pride

_“I might as well inquire why, with so evident a desire of offending and insulting me, you chose to tell me that you liked me against your will, against your reason, and even against your character? Was this not cause for incivility, if I _was_ uncivil?”_

_i._

Eli should say something witty. Humor would free him, would give him the indifference he craved.

He was silent.

“I know it’s too soon, and all wrong—but it’s real.” Darcy’s fists were crushed against her opulent dress. “I think of you every day, every moment. I admire you without understanding you, I love you without understanding myself.”

And still—still! Eli could not speak.

“Believe me.” Darcy’s eyes never strayed from his. “This doesn’t come easily. I’m supposed to be _better_ than this. But you just...I couldn’t get you out of my head. Or my heart, it seems. I tried. I really did. I told myself to think of your family. How incompatible, the lives we lead.” She drew a ragged breath. “_My_ people would be shocked. Humiliated. I told myself that, too. And all for nothing. That’s how strong it is. It’s strong enough that I’m saying it now, when I’ve barely convinced myself I have a right to say it at all.”

If he’d been drunk at the party—and he hadn’t really, Macallan aside— this would have knocked him stone-cold sober. Had he any insight at all? Had he ever been clever, or perceptive? This summer had dealt with him ruthlessly. Darcy wasn’t supposed to be important in his life.

Darcy wasn’t supposed to surprise him.

“It’s too soon,” Darcy said. There was a glow to her, somehow. “But that’s better than being too late.”

_Too late?_ Eli had thought he understood the extent of her arrogance. He hadn’t.

And suddenly, he wanted nothing more than revenge. Here she was, her back against the wall. Here they were, falling rain on them both, fractals of light chasing the shadows, finery disregarded.

The whole world upside down.

Eli was rarely cruel. But with Darcy—

He closed in, flattening his hands against the bricks on either side of her pale shoulders, almost, _almost_ touching her. Close enough to kiss or kill, his lips a hairsbreadth from hers.

She was trembling. She was blushing. He’d never seen Darcy blush; he hadn’t known she fancied herself in love.

“Too late?” he said at last. “Too late for what?”

Then he stepped away from her, and let scorn fill the space between them.

Darcy went still.

“At least,” said Eli, with a smile that wasn’t a smile, “Since I disgust you, any pain you’ve suffered over me will be, I think, of short duration.” He was barely breathing, it was all happening so fast—“Likely, we can go forward with our respectively shitty lives, and never think of each other again.”

Darcy squared her shoulders. The vulnerability in her face had faded with her blushes. A disinterested streetlight told him that much. “Do you,” she asked sharply, “Expect me to apologize for opening up my heart?”

“It’s not very much of a heart, is it?” Eli said. Well, sneered. He could admit that he sneered. “And what _do_ you expect, exactly, when you tell me that you love me against your will, your reason—even your good character? Should I be proud that my indefinable charms overcame your every better instinct?” Purple prose, always, when he was especially pissed.

His brothers would laugh at him.

Darcy looked ready to retort, set features warring with something in her eyes, but Eli wasn’t finished. “Oh, that’s not all. I’m to thank you, am I? After what you did to _James_?”

For the first time, her gaze faltered.

He asked, low and dangerous, “Are you going to deny it? That you pushed them apart? You can’t have me, when you’ve ruined him. That was your mistake. Not the only mistake.”

Darcy’s lip curled slightly. Haughty as ever, apparently, so he _had_ been right—her heart was a temporary creature, and only temporarily _his_. “I’m not denying that I did everything I could to separate your brother from _my_ best friend. I was kinder, there, than here. Kinder to them than towards myself.”

Eli caught a particularly nasty epithet before it left his lips. “Right,” he said, instead. “Got that, loud and goddamn clear. Same goes for Gemma? Some sort of twisted kindness?”

_That_ caused a change. Her face worked and twisted. With difficulty, she controlled herself.

He had expected her pain to look more satisfying.

“Gemma Wickham,” she said, with marked bitterness. “Yes, please do tell me more about kindness and Gemma Wickham.”

“You stabbed her in the back out of spite,” Eli spat. “You beat the shit out of her future so that she wouldn’t be your competition. Blackmail, really? But you’ve _sworn_, of course, to uphold the law.”

“Blackmailed her? Oh, yes. _I _blackmailed _her_.”

He ignored the inflection. “So.” He folded his arms and leaned back, grinning with a recklessness he was too sick to feel. “Entitlement and hypocrisy? Is that it? Is that what I should fall for?” The rain kept on, steady. All the steadiness there was.

To his surprise, Darcy didn’t sneer. If he could have attributed any natural feeling to her, he would have thought that her on the verge of tears. But Darcy, surely, didn’t cry.

“This is your opinion of me,” she said, quiet now. “Well. My faults are endless, and I am, it seems, hopelessly bad. Maybe it would have been kinder to _your_ ego if I hadn’t been honest about the struggles I faced—laying down my hopes and heart like this. Is it a shock, really, that someone like me, yes, like _me_, with responsibilities and duties most people can’t imagine—is it a shock that I would have to think long and hard before letting emotion get in the way?” She barely paused. “But wealth, to you, creates a multitude of sins. I suppose I can understand that. What I _don’t_ understand is why you pretend to be self-righteous instead of admitting that you’re threatened by anyone who doesn’t think love means fawning at your feet. I could have. Sometimes I wanted to. Any time you are near me, I’m all yours. I could have knelt, or begged. But flattery disgusts me. I’ve no time to be pretty and weak; I’ve never had much time at all.”

Now, she breathed. And Eli didn’t.

“What was I supposed to say?” asked Darcy. “That I was _glad _to find myself desperate for someone whose life is so far beneath my own?”

He had been angry before; then raw with hurt. Now, he was in a full fury, and seeing too much red. Her magnificent dress was the only splash of true color in a night-lit world. He thought of crushing her against him in a bruising kiss, smearing still-too-perfect lipstick across them both. But he thought of what little dignity he had, standing here.

A man and his shame and a rented tuxedo in a city that seemed to belong to everyone but him.

“You’re mistaken,” he said, “If you hadn’t done what you did to Gemma or James, I’d still have _you_. And that’s enough to hate you, Darcy. It really is.”

She didn’t move. For a long moment, she didn’t speak. They’d both gone too far—even Eli could realize that. Then Darcy said, very quietly, “Thank you. I understand.” She moved away from where she had been standing during this whole exchange, smoothing her damp, crumpled dress around her, and added, in the same, measured voice, “I can only now be ashamed of what my own feelings have been.”

Eli did not watch her go.

_ii._

What was interest, what was loyalty? They were hard to separate. She held herself back from life: that was honoring grief. She lived recklessly, openly, without identity: that was anger, and so, also grief.

In college, she hoarded works by Korean-American poets. She didn’t tell anyone. At the Korean place tucked in an East Village basement, she filled her mouth with _gimbap _and listened to the women chatting quietly, in the language that had been her mother’s. George was with her, grinning at his phone, on some of those occasions. Oblivious and happy, because Darcy still lived for him.

The women didn’t sound like her mother, and they didn’t look like her either. Darcy hadn’t known her mother when her mother was old.

Sun Yung Shin said, _The moment of extinction / the death of the last individual of a species / (Let’s put it aside for now)_.

Mom!

Mom had been careful about the pieces she preserved, the pieces she hid, the pieces she shared. She made _kimchijigae_, _yaksik_. She called it survival food, half-joking. They were rich, weren’t they? They lived in a palace.

Mom only cooked when Dad was away. She did not drink; Darcy was the one who drank. Darcy drank because anger and grief were hard to separate.

But Mom had made herself into ten different, lonely people, for one man.

Darcy—

“Darcy? What the hell?”

It took a moment. Darcy blinked, rain and tears heavy on her eyelashes. Fitz’s car had pulled up beside her and he was leaning out of the back window.

“_Darcy_,” he said again, sounding panicked. Darcy looked down and realized that her dress was long past ruined. She was drenched and shivering. Her feet hurt, too, in these damnable heels; how long had she been walking?

_Not long._ Over her shoulder she could see the hotel in the distance, another glow of lights in an endless strand.

She was almost…_home_.

“Are you hurt?” Fitz was getting out of the car. The traffic was still heavy, carving the rain into shards of light and shadows of water. They couldn’t stay here.

“I’m fine,” she said. “I—”

“I saw you follow Eli out,” he said, “But you didn’t come back—”

She pushed past him and climbed into the back of the car. What was the point? What was the point of anything?

“I’m asking you again,” Fitz said, low but still urgent. He had one hand on her face—he was checking her pupils. “Darcy, what is going on? You look like death.”

“I didn’t know he hated me,” she said, and this was pity, she was seeking pity, and it _hurt_. “I should have.”

Fitz said nothing for a long moment, but his hand was very still on her face. Then he said, “Damn. I thought...I thought you two were—”

She was cold. She was cold and her head hurt and her feet hurt, and _how_ could she not have noticed this when she was walking? Everything was pain, and everything was spinning, but she only started crying when Fitz put his arms around her. She sobbed into his ridiculous brocade.

Fitz didn’t ask. Fitz, as always, already knew.

(He’d said she looked like death.)

It ended. Mourning passed, though grief did not pass with it. Darcy sat up, smoothed her hair back from her face, and rubbed at her eyes. Her makeup smeared over her hands. She took a deep breath, and then another, and another.

Darcy said, in her usual flat tones, “Don’t say anything to George.”

As though Fitz would.

When they arrived at the apartment, George was mercifully asleep. Silently, Fitz followed her upstairs and handed her a towel out of the linen closet. Then he said, “When you’re done, there’ll be tea in the kitchen.”

Darcy just nodded.

She ran the shower for a long time. The dress swooned in a woeful heap on the bathroom floor. Thousands of dollars, no doubt—Chris Burgh had probably left the receipt in the box in a typically tactless touch.

Darcy rubbed her neck, wincing under the welcome sting of hot water.

She would never see him again, it seemed. He would never want to see her again, and she should honor that, should stay here and forget, if forgetting was something that she knew how to do.

Or—

And here it was, her pride and her fall. Darcy wanted justice. Sometimes she wanted it almost as much as she wanted love.

She dressed quickly, slung the towel over her shoulders to let her hair dry, and padded downstairs in her bare feet. Fitz had left the cup of tea, as promised, and a note that said, _in my room if you need me._

Not intruding. He knew her well.

Darcy drank her tea. The apartment was dark and hollow around her; a place that never felt like home. She settled on the couch and stared at the slick plasma surface of the television. Then, dissatisfied, she sat at George’s piano, and stared at the shadows and gleams of the family pictures on the wall.

The night was passing, and she was still in love.

But Eli would never love her.

In the heat of her hopes and passion, she had pretended that the risk she was taking on a few months’ belief was a sacrifice. In the end, this offering was not just burnt; it was burnt out.

Lesson learned. And she would keep learning it, because Darcy might have been a fool tonight, but she wasn’t always. She would remember him, and remember this moment, until it was a part of her.

Living her mother’s life, backwards, in rejection, in tribute.

Until that time, until life itself was finished, there was one thing she must do.

She went into her office. George and Fitz had been very adamant about the apartment having an office, and she had raised an eyebrow at them, knowing full well that their reasoning largely depended on their desire for a living space free of case printouts and legal pads strewn about. As if _Darcy_ would strew anything.

In that office, then, she opened the second right-hand desk drawer and found what she was looking for. Stationary—no yellow legal pads for this. Thick, ivory paper that draped over her fingers.

The luxury might be ironic, but it was all she had.

Darcy picked up her pen, switched on the lamp, and wrote.


	22. wishes which cannot too soon be forgotten

_“Will you do me the honour of reading that letter?”_

_i._

Eli woke to the worst hangover of his life.

He had nobody to (fairly) blame but himself. He’d stumbled in the door—not drunk, then—and had drained a terrible quantity of Charlie’s top-shelf whiskey.

So much for leaving in the morning. When he was done puking, he crawled back into bed and felt too much like Dad.

His dreams were little comfort. He dreamed that he was running, and James was missing, and no matter how much he tried, he couldn’t reach the front door of the old house. He woke again with a start.

He showered and shaved and knew, with awful certainty, that his whole thesis was a load of bullshit. Art imitating life, as it were.

Charlie wasn’t home. If this meant—as he feared it did—that Charlie had spent the night with Tatianna—

Eli shuddered and dismissed the thought. Not enough brain-bleach in the world.

He’d forgotten to charge his phone. Like all hopes and dreams, therefore, it was almost dead. Rubbing his forehead, which did nothing to soothe the headache beneath, he realized that his plan to leave in the middle of the night had been a foolish one. At the very least, he needed to collect what few personal items he’d left at the school.

It was an irresponsible, asshole move, leaving a job without notice. It was also unavoidable. Summer was over, Eli told himself. There were other tutors.

Sure. That was an ironclad excuse. Guiltily, Eli shot a text to Fitz—_OK if I stop by the school? Need to grab something._

_Yeah. Nobody’s around on Sunday. Got your keys?_

He wondered if Fitz knew. It seemed...probable, on one hand, but then again, Fitz hadn’t known that the Bing’s mystery dirtbag was a Bennet. Darcy obviously played her cards close to the vest, even with her family. _Shocker_.

In the pale light of morning, he leaned against the wall of his room, head throbbing, and listened to the whine and rumble of traffic. Did the city wake if it never slept?

_Any time you are near me, I’m all yours._

The subway car was packed, for a Saturday. The only seat available was pooled with mystery liquid. Eli decided to stand.

He would turn a new leaf. Another new leaf, damn it, whether he ended up in Meryton or Mumbai.

Responsible. He’d figure out how to make a responsible future.

Hunsford, cruelly, still looked the hell of a lot like a future. Brick-worked beauty and St. John’s spire close by. He and Fitz had snagged Hungarian _dobosh_ from a cash-only place and walked around the church courtyard a few times. Felt like they were in England: peacocks strutting around and everything.

He’d miss Fitz. After some reflection, he scribbled out a brief apology and slipped it under Fitz’s office door. Basically, _hey, man, sorry I suck but I had a quarter-life crisis_. Not exactly in those words.

_I admire you without understanding you, I love you without understanding myself._

He swallowed. He had been so angry, and he was still angry, but he was too tired in the sensible light of morning to keep the swell of flame burning within him.

Eli shut the door of his shared office, with a briefcase under his arm. He would be forgotten. A name in an HR folder, nothing more. Failures had no legacy.

On the front steps, he stopped short.

Darcy was standing there, an envelope in her hand.

Gone were the diamonds, the crimson dress, the flush in her cheeks. She was wearing black slacks and black heels with a buckle that meant Manolo Blahnik and a white button-down, clinically professional and cold.

Eli knew he looked like hell. He also felt like hell, and the whole thing just...he couldn’t deal with this right now. How had she even known he’d be here? _Damn_ Fitz. He was such a traitor. Eli looked away from her and started walking.

“Eli,” she said, just before he shouldered past her, “Please.”

He turned on his heel. “What?”

She held out the envelope. “I’d be honored if you would read this,” she said. She looked tired, if more composed than he felt. “Please.”

It was the second _please_ that did it; it was so unlike her. Eli took the letter. He was many things, and curious was always one of them. Darcy’s heels tap-tapped over the herringbone pavement as she walked away.

Eli stared down at the envelope. Since the school was abandoned, no one would find him here today. He sat on one of the long, low benches in the courtyard under the trees out front.

He slid his thumbnail along the smooth-edged flap of the envelope. The paper was thick; it felt expensive. Linen blend, probably.

Darcy wrote neatly, not beautiful. Eli didn’t know why he cared. 

There were two sheets of paper covered on both sides. Eli chewed on his lip and began reading.

No salutation, just straight lines crowded together.

_I know that a letter is old-fashioned, but a conversation is impossible for both of us and this is the only other way to tell you the whole of what I have to say._

_No need to worry. This is not, in any way, a repetition of my feelings. I realize how completely they disgusted you. I don’t want to disgust you again._

_This letter is not an appeal to your heart, but to your sense of justice. I’m sure this seems defensive. Please understand that defense is sometimes necessary. Others beside myself are affected by the truth of questions that you raised last night._

_I know that of first concern to you is your brother. I know, though you may not believe it, what it means to care for a brother more than any person in the world. I am not trying to hide, though, that I helped end his relationship (such as it was, or might have been) with Bing. I have known Bing a long time. Our friendship surprises people, because—as I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, of all people—she is my superior in both charm and substance._

_I am not a pleasant person. Since you agree, I won’t go into it much further._

_Anyway, I’ve known Bing since college. She was often in love, and often beloved. When she met James, she liked him immediately, but I’d seen her like many people immediately, and didn’t think much would come of it._

_Yet, despite the brief nature of our visit to Meryton—not brief enough, for some—I soon saw that Bing cared a great deal about your brother. She is very much a believer in love at first sight and all that...an opinion I’ve never shared._

_I don’t, admittedly, know very much about that kind of love. Last night certainly showed you that._

_I saw that Bing had fallen hard. She could talk and think of nothing but James. I had no objection to a friendship, but I watched your brother carefully as well. You know him better, but to me, their quick pace—I think they spent five weeks together in total—concerned me. Your brother was always pleasant and polite, but I could not see anything other than typical male interest in Bing. I had to look further, to his family and social circle, to try to guess his plans. To guess, to use an old phrase, his intentions._

_I am sorry if this offends you, but I was not impressed. I will not pretend to be blind as to the differences of our situations, but that matters much less to me than you probably think. My worries had much more to do with the behavior of your younger brothers, and particularly, your father. Bing is sweet and naïve. Someone has to protect her, and as I said, I could see more clearly and wisely on her behalf than on my own._

_There was no real reason for Bing to stay in Meryton for the whole summer. Before we came, she wanted a job. I helped her find one. This was not some new scheme; it had been in the works for a while. However, I did use it as an opportunity to achieve some distance between Bing and your brother._

_Bing’s brother Cal, I believe, involved himself at this point. I think he may have misrepresented Bing’s feelings and interest to your brother. I thought that was underhanded, but, for better or worse, I decided to let things take their course._

_I do regret that I helped Cal conceal James’ visit to Boston from Bing. I feel guilty for helping him and for not owning up to what I did. But I believed—I still believe—that despite temporary pain, it was truly in everyone’s best interests to let time pass, moving them apart._

_It is certainly possible (even probable) that I misread your brother. But Bing is my friend, not James. I did what I thought was right._

Eli crumpled that page in his hand. _A hell of an apology_, he thought. No wonder she was a lawyer. She never conceded a point.

It was ludicrous, to blame James. To trust _Cal_. But a memory, unbidden, hurled itself back at him...Dad drunk and swinging on the Lees’ dance floor.

What woman _would _want someone she loved to be caught up with such a family?

_Stop defending her,_ he scolded himself. He smoothed out the page and turned it over.

_You also accused me of a grim series of wrongs against Gemma Wickham. I don’t know what she told you; I avoid her and discussion of her whenever I can. I’ll make an exception now._

_I assume you know that my parents are dead. If you didn’t, you do now. My mother would tell this part very differently, and perhaps it’s only fair to include what she would say, for a moment. My mother always felt that she owed Gemma’s mother a great deal, since she helped my mother learn English and figure out American life as a college student. _

_Gemma is five years older than I am. Our mothers stayed close. When Gemma’s parents divorced, they stayed with us. Gemma was inseparable from my mother, and with good reason. I think I owe it to my mother to say that._

_I looked up to Gemma like a sister for some time. She was very charming and interesting. People always like her when they meet her. _

_When my parents died, I was fifteen and Gemma was about twenty. Her mom had married again and moved out west. But Gemma had stayed with us because she had a much better relationship with my mother than her own._

_If I resented this, it was a child’s resentment. I still considered Gemma my close friend. Gemma completed her college degree slowly, with help from my mother’s bequests. She expressed concern about how I was doing after my parents died. A fair concern. Things were pretty bad for a while. _

_When I was seventeen or eighteen, I stopped hearing from Gemma, so I visited her at college. It was very different than when my mother had been alive. She didn’t seem very happy to see me and even insulted my family. I was—it may surprise you—hurt. But I thought that it would pass._

_When I was in college, and preparing for law school, Gemma was in and out of my life. I suspected substance issues. She visited our house once, and some of my mother’s jewelry went missing. I avoided asking her to come again. In the world I come from, substance abuse is pretty common, more common than you’d think. I didn’t know, then, how to help her, but I hoped that she could find help for herself. I would happily wish her well if that was all that had happened. _

_I forgot to mention that, because of my mother’s generosity, we went to the same college. We didn’t see much of each other. She finished before me, but towards the end of my senior year, I accidentally discovered that she had had a relationship with a married professor, and recorded some compromising film. I overheard a conversation between them where it was clear that she was using the tape to get monthly payments from him._

_We were both interested in law school, and would have entered at the same time. My mother had actually worked to prepare a grant for her. After finding out about the professor, I confronted her. Perhaps I should have gone to the police, but I knew that my mother would not have wanted me to. Instead, I offered Gemma a deal; I would put her through rehab, and help her get on her feet, but she had to promise that she would stay clean and give up her dream of going to law school. I did not feel right using my mother’s legacy to finance the education of someone who, in my view, was unfit to practice law._

_Gemma was angry, but she agreed. She went through rehab while I was finishing college and, as far as I knew, stayed clean for the years following. She always had talent in ballet, and expressed an interest in pursuing it professionally. I assisted her, and we went our separate ways._

_I was hard on her, then. I was hurt by the loss of a friend, though our relationship had always been difficult. I treated her as if she owed me a debt, because of the help my mother had offered. _

_I regret that. Not wholly for reasons of personal growth. At the time, _ _I was disgusted by what she had done. I made it very clear to her, at our parting, that I never wanted to see her again._

_Unfortunately, I did see her again._

_What I am going to write about now I must ask you, please—please—to keep absolutely secret. I would never tell another soul about any of what follows if I did not think it was necessary for you to understand. I guess I can credit this confession to the feelings I spoke of last night._

_As I think you know, I have a brother who is significantly younger than me. He was only eight when our parents died. George is extremely sensitive. He is also an extraordinarily talented pianist. From a young age, that has always been his focus and passion._

_When I entered law school, I did so with the foolish idea that I could take care of George (who was only fourteen) and achieve my own goals at the same time. He struggled greatly with depression, but I was confident that, having overcome some issues of my own in my teens, I could take over from older relatives as his full-time guardian. Instead, despite the fact that it was just the two of us, we grew apart during those year. He wasn’t confiding in me like usual._

_Fortunately, Fitz was there. Fitz, as you know, is probably the best person in the world. No matter what you think of me, I hope you and Fitz can remain friends. He really is worth it._

_Fitz was abroad a couple years ago, though, when I was overworking myself at the start of my second year of law school. Rather than reconnect with estranged relatives, I sent George to stay with an old family friend of ours, on Long Island, whom I made the mistake of trusting._

_Without my knowing, Gemma had maintained a connection with this family friend. She started visiting frequently, and George remembered her fondly. They are ten years apart, and he had always worshiped her._

_George was very much taken in by Gemma. I believe he thought himself in love, and she was definitely taking advantage of him. He had just turned sixteen._

_I don’t know if Gemma herself had relapsed, but she was deeply in debt and I believe she was engaged in illegal activity of some form or other. Unexpectedly, I had a weekend off, and, missing George, decided to surprise him with a visit._

_When I arrived, I learned from George—who was unable to keep the secret from me any longer—that he and Gemma were flying to Europe the next day. I suspected what he could not: Gemma intended to use George as leverage against me to pay off her debts._

_Here again, you may wonder why I did not press charges based on my suspicions and conjecture, as well as her relationship with George. Something could have been proved. But George was in a very fragile state, and it would have been impossible to pursue a case without entangling him in endless scrutiny. I warned Gemma that I would hunt her down myself if she ever came near him again, or tried to hurt him in any way. I took George back to Manhattan with me and Fitz cut short his travel plans._

_Writing this brings back all the pain of it. I have failed at many things in my life, as you know, but my greatest failure was this: I couldn’t protect my brother. He is everything I am not—good, hopeful, deserving. I reclaimed his physical safety, but I could not prevent his heart from being used and broken._

_For the truth of any of this, you can ask Fitz—I am sure you (rightly) trust him far more than me. He is fully aware of all these facts._

_No doubt this all sounds very much like excuses. Excuses for me, and my coldness and rigidity. Excuses for my conduct, and the way in which I opened my heart to you._

_But my heart could not bear the thought of you not knowing this._

_I need you to know._

_Darcy_

In the ornamental trees, birds chattered. Eli listened to them, listened to the rush of a breeze shaking the yellow-frilled leaves.

He was overcome. His fingers trembled, paper trembling with them. Anger and scorn had worked well in concert against the first part of the letter; against any attempt of Darcy’s to pretend that condescension was compassion.

The second half of the letter was something else. He realized, his stomach churning sickly, that either Gemma or Darcy was lying. At first, their stories were mostly the same—mothers’ friendship, Gemma’s close connection to Darcy’s family, plans for law school.

But Gemma’s account afterwards was vague. Darcy ruined her life because Darcy was jealous. Darcy complained to the Bar and shot Gemma’s chances of being a lawyer all to hell. Apparently, Darcy was all-powerful because she was wealthy. There were very few details, he realized now.

Only one: Eli had seen himself in her, or thought he had.

But who was Gemma? No one knew what she had done or where she had been before coming to Meryton; nobody knew very much about anyone in the ballet company. As for Darcy’s side of things, Eli had a strong feeling that no other person on earth but Fitz (and George, and Gemma) knew the truth of what had gone down a year before.

Darcy was cold, and proud, and Eli hated her. _Had_ hated her, for a while now—and knew down to his bones that she would never tell a lie that would hurt her brother.

Darcy, then, was telling the truth.

Suffering stung all the more when it was partly your own fault. Eli’s head hung heavily; he had been taken in again and again.

He was an idiot, and this wasn’t even the end of the world.

He tried to imagine failing James like that, watching James suffer like that. And George was younger than Darcy—much younger. Sixteen? That was not quite Levi’s age. It was unthinkable. He remembered, cruelly:

_Doesn’t Darcy have a brother?_

_George. He’s a lot younger than her. Total sweetheart, or used to be. The last time I saw him…He was a lot like she is now… She can be very charming when she wants to be, you know. I’m just glad to be free…and leave the rest to the universe._

Eli stared at the trembling treetops. “Had _I_ been the one in love,” he said aloud, “I could not have been more wretchedly blind.”

_ii._

“Darcy?”

Bing was just—standing there. Darcy had been to Bing’s parents’ home many times; it was a nice old Bostonian brownstone, grand to most and quaint to Darcy.

It wasn’t like Bing not to offer a hug.

Darcy smoothed out the creases in her slacks. The Bentley was idling on the curb. She’d driven straight here; it was early afternoon. No amount of NPR reflections on the state of a September Sunday had been enough to distract her from the thought of Eli reading (or not reading) the letter.

She’d needed Bing, needed her verve and her smile and her _noise._

“I had to see you,” Darcy said, “I hope you don’t mind.”

There must have been something in her face, something particularly and unusually pathetic, because Bing’s expression changed, softened a little (though it was Bing, and so there had been no real hardness to begin with).

“Come here, you silly thing,” Bing said, and wrapped her in a hug. Darcy was taller than Bing, especially in heels. She let herself slump a little, and rested her forehead on Bing’s shoulder.

Bing drew back after a long moment. “Go and shut off your car. Then come in and tell me what happened.”

It was then that Darcy let herself admit—really admit—to the coolness that had existed between her and Bing of late. Not a falling out, in any true sense of the word. But they hadn’t been inseparable, and Bing hadn’t brimmed over with her usual delight.

Penitently, she followed Bing inside.

“My parents are out at a brunch,” Bing said. “We’ve got the place to ourselves.” She flopped down on the sofa, and then instantly got up again. “Do you want tea? Do you want _scones_?”

Darcy hadn’t eaten. Bing always seemed to be able to tell. “That would be great, thanks.”

Bing was quiet as she lifted plates and teacups from the cupboard. Then she said, at last, “Darcy, I have a confession to make.”

Darcy took a breath.

Bing stared down at the floor, holding the plates in her hands. “I think I really took a lot of stuff out on you. I know I’ve been distant. I was just dealing with—you were right, I was probably moving too fast with the James thing. It’s OK, we haven’t talked! I promised you, we wouldn’t talk. But now, I think I’m moving on.” She had tears in her eyes. “I just—I was sort of mad, or upset—it wasn’t at _you_—”

Darcy stood up, moved forwards, and put her arms around Bing, imperiling the china. It was awkward because Darcy was awkward about hugging, but she knew that wouldn’t matter to Bing. “Don’t ever apologize to me,” Darcy said. “You don’t ever need to apologize to _me_.”

Bing started to cry.

Darcy started. “Oh, God, what’s the matter?”

“I’m just happy that _you_ hugged _me_,” said Bing.

Darcy drew back and quirked an eyebrow, for appearances. “Have a scone,” she said. “And calm down.”

Bing beamed, still a little watery, and sat down to nibble.

_I need you to know._

Had that been the wrong way to end the letter? Had she said too much, too little? The scone was dry in her mouth. Fitz hadn’t though it wise for her to seek out Eli in person, but he’d given in and told her where to go when Darcy begged.

_I’d still have you. And that’s enough to hate you, Darcy. It really is._

Did it even matter how she’d ended the letter? _Shit_, she couldn’t keep doing this, or _she’d_ start crying in front of Bing.

She set down her scone, and said, matter-of-factly (or as close as she could come), “I fell in love, Bing.”

Bing’s jaw dropped. “Oh. My. Wait, was it with E—”

“It was a guy in the city,” Darcy interrupted, a little too hurriedly. “I fell in love, like an idiot, and—well, he hated me of course—” and she said _that_ like it was easy, like it didn’t feel as if she picked apart the chambers of her heart with each word—“And so I just wanted you to know.” She paused. Took a sip of tea. “I wanted to you to know, because I’ve been very hard on you over the years, and I...I see how difficult it is when—”

“When you can’t breathe without thinking of them?” Bing asked softly, and Darcy’s heart felt a pang again. _So much for Bing moving on_.

“I was going to say when your hormones are in overdrive and your brain has lost the ability to fully function, but sure.”

Bing propped her chin on her hands. The sunlight through the kitchen windows, set her curly hair in vivid, gold-edged relief. A halo for Bing; how fitting. “It hurts,” she said.

“Yes,” said Darcy. “But...are you going to be alright?”

“I think so,” Bing said. “The commute’s a beast, but I really do love the job. I think I told you that, but I probably didn’t tell you with, like, enough _sincerity_, because as I said I was kind of...working through some stuff.”

Darcy traced a finger over the bird’s eye maple of the Lees’ tabletop. “I’m glad,” she said. “About the job. I’m glad that you like the job.”

“Now,” said Bing, as if setting her mind to something, “We could go to a park. I’d like to go to a park.”

Darcy glanced at her watch. Time had somehow ceased to have meaning. “I’ve got to get back this evening,” she admitted, “But I have time for a walk.”

Bing grabbed her scarf off a hook in the hallway. “You don’t have sensible shoes,” she gasped, pointing at Darcy’s stilettos.

“I never have sensible shoes.” Which wasn’t quite true, but sometimes Darcy was faintly whimsical. She’d worn the Manolos to give her courage, this morning. “There’s sidewalk, right?”

“Yes,” Bing agreed, with a fond sigh. “Yes, we’ll keep to sidewalks.”

She really didn’t look unhappy. Darcy had no doubt that Bing’s version of moving on still left more than half of her heart to things unsaid, but at least she wasn’t as deflated as she’d been when Darcy had last seen her. All of which confirmed a painful undertone of suspicion Darcy had long since had; Bing was cheerful when she had something to comfort. Which meant, the more cheerful Bing was, the more pitiful _Darcy_ probably was.

“Are _you_ going to be alright?” Bing asked as they walked, confirming the suspicion.

“Of course,” Darcy said, and it sounded like the lie it was.


	23. capable of some amiable feeling

_“Vanity, not love, has been my folly. Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned. Till this moment I never knew myself.”_

_i._

Meryton had no train station. Eli took a Greyhound, and disembarked in a dust-bowl parking lot. The dingy glass shelter hung with peeling posters.

He’d arrived just after four o’clock on Monday afternoon. No one was waiting for him, but Zach Long was sunning himself in the bed of his pickup.

Eli had gone to school with him, kindergarten through senior year.

“Eli!” said Zach. “Thought you were a city slicker now.”

Eli raised a hand in greeting and said nothing. One of the posters had torn off the pin-board altogether, and languished at his feet. It was for the ballet of two summers ago.

It would have made him think of Gemma, had he not already been thinking of Gemma. That was the trouble with the long silence after any storm. There was so much—_too_ much—time for thinking.

He didn’t ask Zach for ride. Before leaving Charlie’s apartment, he’d sorted through his clothing and left behind everything bought by Charlie’s credit card. That was his take-the-high-road gesture.

He’d also left a bunch of his own crap behind with a fifty-dollar bill pinned to it, and a note that said _Mail This_. That was his be-a-little-shit gesture.

Even without much to hoist on his shoulders for the long trudge home, he felt the heft of enough to weigh him down. Eli squinted along the long familiar road, trying to find something to focus on that wasn’t Gemma’s glass-sliver smile, quick to aim for the jugular. Something that wasn’t Darcy, pale as death and yet very much alive, telling him she loved him.

But the bridges he’d burned were all his future dreams. The only path before him was the one that went back to the start.

Eli had a dull headache and a letter he’d read over five times on the bus folded in the pocket of his jacket. Eli was going home, and he had the passing thought that the warriors of old were fortunate for only returning home when they were victorious, and dying otherwise.

The road looked the same. The trees were in the last dark greens of summer, and a low haze hung over everything. September was a strangely weary time.

James was in the front yard, under the hood of his truck. Eli stood between rays of bronze sunshine and waited.

James’ face changed utterly when he saw him, and Eli could read a hundred questions running across it, but that was what he’d missed most about James: James didn’t ask any of them.

He was in front of Eli in a few quick strides, and the next moment Eli was wrapped in a hug that smelled of sweat and motor oil.

“It all went to hell,” Eli sighed, though James hadn’t said anything, hadn’t asked. “It all went to hell, so I came home.”

“I missed you,” James said. He let go after a second and rubbed a grease-streaked hand through Eli’s hair, grinning.

“Thanks for that,” Eli said. “I missed you, too.”

James closed the hood of the truck. “It’s fine,” he said, with a gesture. Like Eli gave a damn about the truck right now. “Just doing a little tune-up.” He glanced up at the house, and said, “Want to get the worst part over with?”

Dad and Levi and Cody and Mark were all in the living room, watching TV. Eli wanted to run, but he set his jaw instead and just waited until Cody saw him and shouted, “Holy _shitballs_, it’s Eli!”

Mark shut off the TV, and Dad seemed annoyed. Then Dad actually looked around to see what was going on. He stood up abruptly, a beer sweating beads of water through his fingers. “Eli.”

“Dad.”

There was a tense silence. Then Dad set his beer down—deliberately, because Eli could see that his hands were shaking a little—and walked behind the back of the couch until they were face to face.

Eli just stayed still, hands in his pockets, hating himself for barely breathing.

Dad stared him down for a moment, then put a hand on the back of Eli’s neck, pulling him down a little. It wasn’t a hug, exactly, but it was probably the closest thing to he’d had from Dad since high-school. Eli wondered if he should smile, say something, break the ice.

Dad said, “Bet you didn’t think you’d come crawling back this soon, did you?”

Eli smiled _then_. He never expected to be hurt as much as he was, and that was funny in its own way. “I just waited until I had a chance to tell Christopher Burgh to his face how much he sucked ass,” he said quietly, and Dad went livid.

“Stop it,” James said, and stepped in between them, as usual. Just like old times. “Dad—just. Leave him be.”

Dad shrugged off his anger, laughing scornfully, and Cody and Levi laughed too. If their laughter was nervous now, someday it wouldn’t be. Someday they’d be just like Dad, all shaking hands and beers in the afternoon, never losing an opportunity to grind someone down into the same mud they squatted in.

Eli had sealed his own fate. The letter of resignation, without notice, left on the main secretary’s desk at Hunsford. The tense conversation with Charlie Sunday afternoon. The same old steps he climbed now, creaking as they always had.

Oh, yes. Eli was home.

“The worst is over,” James said, softly.

As though the worst could be over and still be the worst.

“Yeah,” said Eli, agreeing anyway. He knocked on Mom’s door.

She clenched the arms of her chair when he came in, and her face lit up. It was so different from Dad’s reaction, and he _had_ expected the difference, of course. He just wished it didn’t have to seem so much like a fight in the making.

“New York was boring,” he said, which was only the eighth or ninth biggest lie he’d told himself today. “Came home.”

“Everything was boring here, as well,” said Mom, exhaling. “James is too kind to be interesting, and the rest of them are as dull as the paint your father never _will_ get around to redoing.”

Eli kissed her on the forehead. “I’ll try to be better than paint.”

“Not in love with any empty-headed girl?” Mom asked.

Eli controlled himself and only smirked. “No empty-headed girls would have me.”

(The letter felt heavy in his pocket.)

Mom chuckled. “Then you are welcome home.”

Night came, and with it, relief from the first pangs of readjustment. Eli and James were together again, and Eli could tell him everything. This was after dinner; after the younger boys had grown comfortable enough to let flow a steady stream of backlogged gossip. Eli had not missed that, but he had missed _them_.

The summer had changed him. He could get his old jobs back—James assured him that the garage would take him on at once. He could keep at his incorrigible thesis—and indeed he had to, if he was ever to finish his degree.

He could bide his time before taking another shot at freedom.

There was no certainty that a second shot would be on offer.

He tried to find humor rather than morose reflection in the story of New York when he recounted it to James, but doing so proved difficult. His feelings often changed, rereading Darcy’s letter as frequently as he did. Sometimes he was angry at her again, for her arrogance and her assumptions. Sometimes he was numb.

Whatever his feelings, he had decided at once that she was telling the truth. The decision was soon irrevocable. Darcy might not be someone he wanted, but she was worthy of respect. He had always known her to be intelligent, ambitious, and confident. Now he knew, too, that she was conscientious, trustworthy, and if not exactly humble—

Willing to sacrifice anything for the people she loved.

He certainly did not love _her_. He told himself that he had been right to reject her, though he could have done a better job of it. He told himself that he never wanted to see her again, but that did not stop him from remembering her.

All of it was a tangled mess. She was the only constant, her eyes unwaveringly on his, no longer the black swan of malice and disguise on some silly eternal stage.

She was just...Darcy.

So, it wasn’t cathartic, telling James. It felt more like dissecting some part of himself. God forbid, his _heart_.

At least James was appropriately shocked by the news. “Darcy,” he said, after a full moment of total silence. “_Darcy_ told you she loved you.” He held up a hand. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I mean, of course she—”

Eli threw a pair of socks at his head with an aim which, having been honed by years of practice, had not been dulled by a few months away. “No, ‘of course’ nothing. Don’t start with your flattery. I know exactly how I treated her. What she could possibly see in me? It’s not like she’s seen me with a shirt off.” He paused, reflecting on certain memories of Netherfield—“Well, not entirely.”

_“Eli_,” said James. “Don’t be flippant.”

“I’m not being flippant. I’m just saying, I was a complete dick to her, _on purpose_, because I thought she was...never mind. I don’t know what she saw in me.”

“And I’m just saying, I _do_.” James folded his arms behind his head and stared at their ceiling. One of the cracks in it had lengthened over the summer. They should check that out before the whole thing fell in on them. “But honestly...man, she must feel horrible.”

Eli glared at him. “You don’t need to rub _that_ in.” He had been right to reject her. Utterly right. If he was sure of nothing else, he knew _that_, at least.

He knew, too, when he’d been cruel.

“Poor Darcy,” said James. “She’d probably never had someone say anything like that to her.”

“Who has? I don’t hold weekly sessions for that shit. Dime-a-dozen insults, whatever.”

James rolled over, propping himself up on his elbow and watching Eli unpack with a deep furrow between his brows. “I can’t stop thinking about Gemma.”

“Yeah, me neither. But not for the...old reasons.” Eli shook his head. “I really shouldn’t have told anyone about that, you know? Not that you’d pass it on, just...I don’t think Darcy has ever told anyone outside. What happened with George.”

“I’d never say anything,” James said. “I just—I keep wondering if there’s...I don’t know. It seems hard to believe that someone could be that much of a—”

“A psychotic bitch? Yeah, she is. Don’t defend her,” Eli snapped. “James, I’m sorry. I know that you are uncannily, weirdly obsessed with finding the good in people. I’ve learned to put up with it, but you _can’t_ do it here. There’s only enough merit between them for one good person. And yes, certainly, the quality has shifted around a lot of late, but I’m pretty damn certain it’s all Darcy’s at this point.” He sighed. “People can be that awful. Too bad Gemma had me on strings.”

“It’s not your fault,” James said.

“Isn’t it, though? I get pissed at someone, and I’d believe anything about them, apparently. Without verifying or questioning why the hell some random chick would pour out her life story on the first day.”

“That _was_ kind of odd,” James agreed.

“That was messed up, and I was too pigheaded to realize it, because I was getting too much enjoyment out of hating Darcy.”

“Do you really enjoy hating people?”

“Yes,” Eli said, hanging his empty backpack on its timeworn hook. “I really, really do.” His grin was a little wan, possibly, but it was still a grin. “Quite a spur for genius, you know? Can’t help saying something clever eventually. But it gets me into all kinds of trouble.”

“Do you hate her now?” James asked.

The grin, such as it was, faded. “No,” Eli said. “She doesn’t deserve it. I’m just going to...forget her.”

“Like she’ll forget you?” James asked, and it was bold, irony coming from James.

“Something like that,” said Eli.

The silence lasted too long. Then James asked, hesitantly, “The letter didn’t...um...” He paused. He cleared his throat. “She didn’t say anything about Bing? Or me?”

James was too good. Too quiet. He kept too much to himself so that people didn’t know for certain when he was in love, and Eli hated to see that he was still suffering. But James had had the misfortune to be born into a family of assholes. Eli couldn’t do anything about that. At least, he figured, no hope was better than false hope.

“No,” he said. “We didn’t.”

_ii._

_“Mom, are you mad at Aunt Karen?”_

Darcy had always wanted to know too much.

_“No, I’m not. She just…she just made a joke that upset me, a little.”_

_“The one about Dad saving you?” _She’d always known too much _already_. Aunt Karen accused Gemma of the same thing, but Mom was never so harsh.

Still, she remembered the way her mother’s lips had pinched at the corners. “_Yes._”

_“Isn’t saving people a good thing?”_

_“Yes. But Dad didn’t save me. We just fell in love, like everyone else does.”_

Fifteen years gone by. Darcy slipped off one heel, then the other, and rubbed her foot, which was cramping. George tilted his head to one side, hands pausing on the keys.

“Something happened, didn’t it?”

“Work has been a bit stressful lately, yeah.” She was not old enough to have these aches.

George frowned. “No. Not work. That’s a different pinched expression.”

“I have different pinched expressions?” Darcy asked. Trust George to have a catalogue of them, for just such an occasion as this. She wondered if her mother’s worried mouth was one of them.

“I...I wasn’t saying—”

“I’m kidding,” Darcy said. “You and Bing never seem to know when I’m being sarcastic.”

“You’re _inscrutable_,” George said, punctuating the word with dramatic air-quotes.

Darcy laughed. _Inscrutable_ was a favorite of Chris Burgh’s, somehow managing to crop up whenever he was discussing his dealings with Asian people (“_You two excepted, of course, of course. Kenneth’s kids. Kenneth’s kids_.”).

“It’s all terrifying,” George said, but he got up and came to wrap her in a hug from behind. “I just want to make sure you’re OK.”

There were many things that she didn’t need to explain to George, because they’d suffered together, even if they suffered in different ways. Sure, Darcy bore the burden when it came to actually trying to manage wealth and all the people and problems that came with it, but George was right. He knew her expressions.

He didn’t recognize this one because Darcy had never suffered _this_ before, this dying by inches. She’d been plagued by thoughts of Eli; now she was plagued by memories.

“I thought I’d already grown up,” she explained at last. “And I hadn’t.”

George opened his mouth to protest, or to ask her something, but Darcy shook her head slightly. “It’s really fine, George. Just—I was enjoying your playing.”

He nodded sheepishly and returned to the piano. Darcy leaned back and let it in. Music was supposed to be some perfect, cosmic solution for everything, wasn’t it?

George played with talent and expression. Eli hadn’t been anywhere near that, but Darcy was transported to his outburst of passion at the Lucases’, so long ago. He must not have had much real training, of course. They didn’t seem to be the kind of family for music lessons.

Yet when Eli played—and for some reason she had thought of it enough to render herself a very biased expert on his playing—she didn’t notice his deficiencies.

All she could see was something else.

Fitz had told her, in plain and un-prying terms, that Eli had resigned his position and gone back upstate. Fitz had told her, in a voice so gentle it hurt, that he didn’t think it was just about Darcy.

She didn’t know if that made it better or worse.

At least Fitz had told her where she could find him, the morning after.

The only thing that mattered, she thought, resting her tired stocking feet on the arm of the sofa—the only thing that mattered was that Eli was gone. He was gone to Meryton, and she could find him there if she followed, but Darcy was done with following.

This time, she would let him go.

She passed a hand over her face, while George shifted into a minuet. She was pondering the worst, silliest things—utterly impractical. Against _all _better judgment, she kept wondering if she should have kissed him. She could have; they’d been close enough to kiss. She could have leaned forward and forced her lips against his, in a stroke of heart-bleeding vengeance for his own nearness. She could have—

Oh, what would that have done? If he _had_ read her letter, perhaps he understood now. She could not ask forgiveness, but understanding was sufficient to let her sleep at night, even if she didn’t sleep well.

But before the letter? Nothing she could have said or done would have compelled him to forget his anger. And even if he did understand, and forgive, repulsion did not stem from nothing. She was the last woman in the world for him. Forgiveness could not change that.

And wasn’t that true of this whole mess? There had been, and remained, a thousand reasons not to fall in love with him. A thousand reasons more why he would never return her feelings.

But she had closed her eyes to all of it, and Darcy—cautious to the point of pain—had taken a leap of faith.

She kept her hand flat across her eyes.

It came as no surprise that the fall had broken her.


	24. not of particular, but general evils

_“It is not in your nature to increase your vexations by dwelling on them.”_

_i._

The old house, and the people in it, were much the same as they had always been. Mom had gotten a little frailer since June.

Now that Eli was back, his day was marked by a familiar routine that began with her care: he helped her to the bathroom, she dressed herself, he went through the limited regime of physical therapy exercises that her last physician had prescribed.

James had said that she wouldn’t do much, without Eli there.

“Bed sores will kill you, Mom,” he said, two days after he got back. They were almost finished, he was kneeling in front of her chair, massaging her wasted ankles, which were cold to his touch. “Haven’t we been over this?”

“I’ve been over this for a long time,” quipped Mom. “If you’d stayed away another month or two, perhaps I could have snuck off into that great, dark abyss your poets like to talk about.”

Eli laughed, not because he thought it was funny, but because he wanted to pretend that she was joking. “Go easy on James, now that I’m here,” he said. “I hear you gave him quite a time of it.”

“Oh, yes,” said Mom, sighing. She had finished brushing her hair—it had been as dark as Eli’s once—and twisted it back into a knot. “My body is such a trouble to everyone else.”

Downstairs, they heard Dad’s roaring, freight-train laugh.

Eli learned anew that, with the exception of himself, his family held few grudges. By the time a week was gone, no one was teasing him for his failed flight. Disappointment and even humiliation, when _he_ dwelt too long on the past, even became manageable companions.

Hope was what truly chafed, but he had little of that at the moment. Days were therefore livable, though the nights were very long.

(He could keep her at bay for most of the day, but he always thought of Darcy at night.)

Yet even Darcy had to give way to more pressing concerns. Eli had expected James to be in better spirits when the summer—and with it, memories of Bing—faded, but James stayed low and quiet through the autumn months. Eli knew why, and wished the intelligence he had received from Darcy could be communicated, but then again, he doubted it would help.

Bing, in love with James or not, was still gone.

So was Darcy. Eli just wasn’t sure if that mattered.

Mr. Phillips hired him back as promised. Eli tried to overlap his shifts at the body shop with James’, so that James wouldn’t be left to his own thoughts too long. James had a lot of shifts. That meant Eli was working more and more sixteen-hour days, and he took to writing his thesis during his hours at the library. Somehow, it ticked along better than it had before. It was almost as though he’d had a proper brush with things apocalyptic—something to give him perspective.

He made enough money to pay Charlie back. When the box of his things arrived in the mail one morning, he sent a check in the afternoon.

Dad would have been pissed, to know about that.

On Fridays, the library closed at two o’clock. Eli stepped out one day with his laptop bag slung over his shoulder, piqued by the uncharacteristic October heat, and found Dad standing on the sidewalk below. Dad looked like he always did, in his dirty jeans and a Carhartt jacket, but his face was strangely solemn.

“Dad.”

“Eli.” Dad fell into step beside him, and Eli set his jaw, bracing himself for some...well, Dad didn’t lecture. Some sort of pissing contest, maybe.

But Dad only said, “I’m worried about your brother.”

Eli almost stopped in his tracks. “Which one?”

“The younger ones are always fine,” Dad said dismissively. “I’m talking about James. I thought he had a sure thing this summer, with that girl—what was her name—Cherry?”

“Bing.”

“Right. That’s a kind of cherry.”

Eli smiled in spite of himself. “Right. Yes. Well, she’s gone back to Boston. It’s only her brother’s summer house here, you know. I don’t think anyone’s there right now.”

“What a damn tangle,” said Dad, with a heavy sigh. “What’s wrong with you lot? Can’t hold down a girl between you.”

If Dad was talking about Tatianna Collins, Eli refused to dignify _that _with a response.

Dad scratched under his baseball hat. “I’m just saying. Your brother looks like death. He’s moping, and that’s not going to do anything for him or his future. Women don’t like _sad_.”

_And yet Mom married you_, Eli thought, but was, at least, wise enough not to say. “I’m trying to look after him, Dad.”

Dad nodded. He was leaning left, turning down the street that led to the bar. Eli wasn’t going to follow him. “I know,” Dad said. “It’s the only good thing you ever do.” There was something almost like affection in his voice, and that took away a bit of the sting.

The day was not meant to end peacefully, however. Eli was trudging home—James had the truck at the shop—when Levi and Cody attacked him from the direction of the theater. Why they still hung around there, when it was empty, Eli had no idea.

“Dude,” Levi practically crowed, “I’ve got news for you!”

“What?”

“Gemma,” Levi said, dragging the name out dramatically. Eli felt the hair rise on the back of his neck.

“What about her?” he said, with what he hoped was admirable calm.

“She and Matt King are done! I keep in the loop, y’know. Denny told me. Everyone thought they were going to do, like, this rapid-fire engagement thing. But Matt King’s boring as shit, Denny said. So it’s no wonder Gemma got tired of him—she’s free.”

“Matt King is free,” Eli returned, still speaking lightly. “I’m sure she’ll find someone else.”

“Didn’t you _like_ her?” Cody demanded, eyes wide. “She was hot!”

“She was more than hot,” Levi said. “She was a _ten_, and you don’t find those every day, and she had _legs_—”

“Every girl has legs,” Eli said, smacking the back of Levi’s head. “Either be more creative with your drool, or don’t drool at all.”

“I heard she might be moving back here,” Levi said, undeterred. “She loved the area…Denny doesn’t know if she’ll stay with the ballet.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Cody. “Who’d leave a gig like that? What’s in Meryton?”

They argued the rest of the way home. 

The air cooled a little, as night rolled in. Eli tried not to think of Gemma coming back to Meryton. Preposterous, really—and for once, Cody was right. There was nothing to tempt anyone to leave a sure career. It was a twisted rumor cooked up in Levi’s adolescent brain, that was all.

Eli heated up leftover lasagna and carried two plates outside, wanting to escape the noise.

“James,” he said. “C’mon.”

That got a rare smile. “We haven’t done this in a while,” James observed, as they sat down on the battered picnic table, which slumped ungracefully under the oak in the front yard. There used to be a tire swing on that tree; between the five of them, they’d worn it out.

“Wanted to do it one more time before you died,” Eli said, poking at the burnt frill of a noodle. Gemma had sat where he was sitting, once. “_Are _you dying?”

James’ smile seemed too tired to do much more than tug at one corner of his mouth. “I’m just...I thought I could—I don’t know. It’s a long-lasting kind of ache. I really thought she was the one.”

James had said it before. He’d say it again, maybe, until he forgot the feeling—if he ever did. Eli had learned to laugh at himself; James hadn’t. He endured, and that was what would probably kill him.

“I’m sorry,” Eli said. “I keep—we’re all worried about you, man. One of the few things that brings the family together.”

James’ brow furrowed. “Oh,” he said. “I’ll try—”

“I’ll stab you with my fork if you say you’ll try to hide it or some bullshit like that.”

“No,” James interrupted. “I just meant, I’ll try to move on. _You’ve_ moved on.”

Did it look that way?

“That was different. I wasn’t—”

“Still,” James said. “Weird to think, right, that every day’s the same length, but the ones you care about stay with you like they’ve lasted for centuries.”

“Burdensome. Maybe that’s why it’s all apathy at the end of the world,” Eli said, around a mouthful.

“Is it, though?” James asked. He squinted at the sunset. The sky glowed gold, and it was beautiful. It was always beautiful, and Eli couldn’t handle that kind of constant demand for appreciation, so he looked back at James.

“Is what?” He realized he’d forgotten the question. Damn perfect sunsets.

“Do you _really _think people wouldn’t care when the world was ending?”

“I don’t even know,” Eli said, “But I’m a hundred and seventeen pages into a paper to that effect, so yeah, I certainly think that people don’t give a flying fig about anything, when the world is ending. If that’s what it takes to get this stupid degree, I’ll carve it on my tombstone.”

“You don’t sound very apathetic,” James said, but his smile was genuine now, and a little of the heaviness lifted off Eli’s chest.

“Eat your lasagna, smartass. I’ve had a long day.”

James complied meekly. They sat out there with plates and forks beside them while the sky went from gold and gray to something emptier, something that didn’t really fit the confines of a color. It was all just light and the absence of light.

Eli rested his elbows on his knees, his chin on his interlaced fingers, and wondered when the hell he’d become so goddamn serious. He guessed he just needed to think through the mess of the summer, sort out the particular evils from the general ones, and find something to poke fun at. It was what he did best.

Meryton was an ordinary place, and his life was not destined to be spectacular. To live, he must laugh at his memories—the heartache, the ivy, the bitter scotch, the girl in the crimson dress.

But it was a long-lasting kind of ache.

_ii._

New York was a good place to grieve.

No one remembered you there, if you passed through the Park, wandered Riverside Drive, slipped inside the dusty cool of an old church, where sweat-stained wood and sacred incense mingled in the rose-tinted air. When Monday came, work was another comfort, if only because it drove everything else out.

Darcy settled into grueling hours. She could pretend that her anxiety came from doc review and opinion-drafting. Being at the beck and call of partners was a lesson in humility, of course, but didn’t Darcy need to learn humility? Didn’t she need to earn something?

She hadn’t been to the Connecticut house in months. Selling it still felt like a cardinal sin, but George never spoke of _going home_, and Darcy wondered if the waste of upkeep was a sin on its own. At Christmas, she would give the family books a close review. Make a decision.

But for now, in mid-fall, as the days at large grew shorter though her own did not, she reminded herself that every free moment was to be spent looking after George, visiting Bing, or apprising Fitz of anything worth telling.

If her dreams were haunting, no one else had to know a thing about them.

Except that Fitz did.

One night in October, she got out of work comparatively early, and scheduled a dinner reservation for herself and Fitz. She met him at the _dojang_ where he practiced taekwondo after school hours. Fitz, passionate about everything he put his mind to, had been enthralled by martial arts from a young age. All the same, he knew better than to try any sort of spinning kick on Darcy.

“You’re early,” Fitz said, observing the obvious. He was still in his white _dobok_, and sweat was standing out on his forehead. “I’m going to have to shower and change.”

“I know,” Darcy said. “I just needed a walk. I’ll go take another while you’re finishing up.”

Fitz said nothing, but looked at her quizzically. Darcy thinned her lips and turned to leave.

She didn’t walk far. Stuyvesant Square Park was nearby, with its rounded pool and dark-patinaed statutes. She pondered the Byzantine mosaics of St. Mary’s, modern but timeless.

She told herself that she’d been doing well, lately.

Eli lived in her thoughts, by the day and by the hour, but that didn’t have to mean anything.

“You’re working too hard,” Fitz said, when he joined her. She had texted him to tell him where she as, and they stood and took in the iconic Marian visage together, for a moment. Fitz was now dressed in a sweater and skinny corduroys and Oxfords, with his hair still damp from the shower.

“What? I think I’m managing pretty well.” Defensively, she picked up the pace, taking brisk strides in the direction of the restaurant. Fitz would have to keep up if he wanted to keep talking.

Fitz said, “You’re going to go crazy, if you lock it all up like that.”

Darcy swallowed, but she turned to look at him, lifting her eyebrows. They hadn’t had a real heart-to-heart since that night. Since he’d stopped the car beside her, dripping and desolate on the sidewalk. “I get to choose what I keep in my heart, Fitz.”

“Keeping stuff in your heart is a bad idea. Either let it go, or let it grow.”

“Ugh, go into marketing.”

“I’m a teacher. I market homework. Hardest thing to sell.” Fitz wasn’t easily thrown off. “I know that you can handle the your workload at the firm—if anyone can, you can. I’m worried about how you’re using it as an excuse to have your soul and brainpower and time just..._consu__med_.”

“Am I neglecting George? Is that what you’re saying?” To her own ears, Darcy’s voice sounded shrill.

“That is not what I am saying.” Fitz shook his head. “You know I would be on that, stat, if I was concerned.” They’d reached their destination, but Fitz didn’t make a move to go in. Instead, he stopped short and shoved his hands in his pocket, too affectionate to be really frustrated. He was just disappointed, then, and that was worse. “Sometimes this is just about _you_, Darcy. Not what you owe to George, or Bing, or me, or the world. How are you doing? Don’t answer that. The answer is—thank you, ladies and gentlemen of this Great City—_not good_.”

“I have three or four people I care about,” Darcy said. “And work. That’s all I’m thinking about right now. What else am I supposed to do?”

“Maybe you should admit that those aren’t the only things you’re thinking about,” Fitz suggested softly.

“Maybe you should—” But that was childish, and Darcy would not be childish. “I’m the one who has to live inside my own head.”

“I know,” Fitz said. “And quite a head it is.”

Darcy folded her arms over her chest. If it made her look angry, so be it. “The point is, Fitz—yes, alright? You want an answer? I think of him. Every day, every night. Of course I do. Have you met me? Once I let anything in it never leaves.” She laughed. “Well, _they_ leave me, of course. But that doesn’t mean I forget them.”

“I’m really not trying to pry,” Fitz said. “But I’m also not going to watch you wreck yourself. And no, it’s not because of George, or me, or anyone. I care about _yo__u_.”

“Well, all that caring is making me hellishly uncomfortable,” Darcy protested. “Seriously, what am I supposed to do in the face of your repeatedly direct assurances of my self-worth?”

“Accept them?

“It was a rhetorical question. Facetious wording? Couldn’t you tell?”

“Everything you say is facetiously worded,” Fitz pointed out. He opened the door for her.

“_H__e_ certainly thought so,” Darcy said, and the sigh that left her actually hurt. “Fine. I’ll regret this. Have you heard from him?”

“No,” Fitz said. “But I don’t think he’s angry.”

A hostess was headed there way. Darcy said, hurriedly, “Why not? Last time I—”

“He’s a good guy,” Fitz said. “I don’t know every detail of what went down between you, but I don’t think he’d stay angry.”

Darcy bit her lip and prayed.


	25. improving upon acquaintance

_“In essentials, I believe, he is very much as he ever was.”_

_i._

In Eli’s experience, Thanksgiving brought neither thanks nor giving. Christmas, at least, had the tree. Thanksgiving had a haphazard feast, Dad drunker than usual, and a particularly bitter undertone to Mom’s humor.

But this year, he was determined that it wouldn’t be yet another play on the same lackluster theme. James liked holidays—despite everything—and given the recent State of James, Thanksgiving needed to kill it. Needed to be the pinnacle of holiday successes.

With such ambitions, Eli took the truck into Meryton on Wednesday morning. The garage and the library were closed. That alone lent festivity to a sallow November day.

His ambitions were somewhat chilled by the grocery store. Eli did plenty of the cooking at home, but he stuck to (hopefully) edible basics. Thanksgiving shopping presented all kinds of questions. How was he supposed to buy a turkey when he wasn’t even sure if he’d measured the oven properly?

He really should have taken James along, and given up on any element of surprise.

A mental image, entirely incongruous but no less affecting, flashed through his mind: Darcy in a similar predicament. He couldn’t imagine Darcy knowing the first thing about cooking. He pictured her in one of her immaculate pantsuits and towering heels, clutching a turkey baster and a spoon, utterly lost. The thought made his lips twitch into a smile.

He shook away the image—Eli was very much intent on _not thinking of Darcy_ these days, whenever possible, because he was likely never going to see her again and that was even more likely _for the best_—and returned to the task at hand.

In the end, he bought too much cranberry jelly and an enormous sack of potatoes to fill in for any poultry-related deficiencies.

When he stepped outside the grocery store the world was flat and distinct, and he felt like he was seeing everything a little too clearly and permanently. It was the kind of day where either something would change or where nothing, _nothing_ would happen at all. Whichever it was, the drab street and the truck with its rusting wheel-wells would be burned in his memory like this, without a real reason.

He was swinging the bags up into the cab of the truck when he had the sudden and unshakeable feeling that he was being watched.

Eli turned, and all he could see, consuming the whole of the gray day and the dingy street, was Gemma.

Eli shut the door of the cab and leaned against it. Nonchalance, at the moment, seemed like safety.

Gemma’s coat hung open as though she didn’t mind the chill. Her smile was the same smile it had always been. When she reached him, she threw her arms around him. He was crushed under her flowery scent, and when she pressed her lips to his cheek, a slight turn on his part would have made it a real kiss.

Several months ago, he might have.

Several months ago, he had been a fool.

“I’ve missed you so much,” she said, stepping back, tucking her shining hair behind her ears. “It’s the time of year for nostalgia, right?”

“Why are you here?” Eli asked. It took a great deal of effort to make his tone a friendly one, but he thought he managed.

“Staying a while,” she said. “Denny’s doing a winter class at SUNY. She screwed up her Achilles’, so the Nutcracker’s out. Anyway, she needed a roommate for a couple months, and I…oh, who cares about me? Not you. If you did, you’d have called.”

Any answer he might give would be a step into the trap.

Eli did that impenetrable guy thing, which had worked for him in the past, where he shrugged with his shoulders and one eyebrow.

“Denny’s a goddamn sweetheart,” Gemma said, dancing back to altruism from self-interest with remarkable ease. “Couldn’t leave her high and dry. And I guess I wanted to see a tired old town again. Brought me a lot of happiness, you know?”

“It’s still tired and old,” said Eli.

“Guess so.” Gemma’s eyes were brimming over with fondness. She was a good actress—and a better liar, Eli thought. Most people lied with words; she could lie with her eyes. “I heard that you left.”

“I did. I came back.”

“Heard you were down in the City.” Gemma flicked her eyelashes up at him as she spoke. He wondered how she knew; but then, she had always known too much. She folded her arms across her chest and tilted her head, as though she roundly enjoyed the chance to just…_look_ at him again. She was unchanged. The mystery of her had tantalized him once, before he discovered its solution.

But Eli could be clever too, so he smiled winningly back. “I was. Had a gig over the summer—at Hunsford school.”

“Hunsford school,” Gemma repeated. “Don’t know it.”

“Actually, Fitz Williams is a teacher there. Do you know him?”

“Fitz?” she asked, unflinching. “What a coincidence. I know Fitz—he’s a joy, isn’t he? So full of life.”

There was, Eli felt keenly, no going back—not even to comfort.

“He’s very different,” Gemma added, “from his cousin.”

Darcy’s letter was in his top drawer, and he hadn’t read it for a couple months now, but he still knew nearly every line.

_No doubt this all sounds very much like excuses. Excuses for me, and my coldness and rigidity. Excuses for my conduct, and the way in which I opened my heart to you._

_But my heart could not bear the thought of you not knowing this._

_I need you to know._

He let something far from fondness slip into his smile and said, “They are very different. But I find Darcy improves on acquaintance.”

Her face changed _then_. Eli was slightly gratified that he could still surprise her. “No shit? Wow. She must have brushed up on her manners. Under that…oof. Hard to imagine.”

“In essentials,” Eli returned, with studied calm, “I believe she is very much what she ever was.”

Gemma, blank, was unrecognizable. She recovered. She laughed. “Oh, Jesus Christ,” she said. “How much she give you for that one, babe?”

He shrugged again.

“You are boring as hell today,” she said. “Got my hopes up too much, maybe.” She glanced at her watch. A nice watch, slim on her slim wrist. “I should go. Denny’s aunt is visiting us and I’m supposed to get food together. I’m gonna burn the whole house down.”

“See you around,” said Eli, not pretending that he wanted to.

Gemma looked at him, sharp and quick, and then she darted in to kiss him.

Eli was quicker. He had two fingers against her lips, keeping them separated from his own.

Very quietly, he asked, “Why did you come here, Gemma?”

She blinked. She smiled, teeth brushing his skin. “What kind of question is that? I’ve been an open book. Told you how much I loved this town.”

“The town may not have changed,” Eli said, stepping away from her and around to the driver’s side of the truck, “But I have.”

She didn’t watch him pull away. He was left alone with his thoughts before he was alone on the country road. He wondered if he had made a mistake, showing his hand like that.

But Eli was tired of secrets.

_ii._

“How much farther to Boston?” George asked.

“Forty-five minutes, maybe?” Darcy switched lanes. They had been trading off podcasts and the latest Red Velvet album for the last couple hours, which, the ultimate sibling compromise. Darcy hadn’t minded the miles; she always felt powerful behind the wheel of a car.

Driving was the first thing she had learned to do completely in the _after_. That meant there were no good memories of it to be ruined by grief.

(She’d demanded to see the bodies, after the plane crash. She’d wanted to verify them, she had said, tearing angrily at the uniforms of whatever nameless officers were bringing her the news. She had to _know_.

_There were no remains_, one of them said, with a kind, nameless voice, and Darcy had known.)

“I can do forty-five minutes,” George said with a sleepy smile of contentment. They’d run through his K-pop offerings and switched to Kendrick Lamar, but Darcy turned down the beat when George tipped his head against the tinted window of the Bentley and shut his eyes.

Darcy loved him. She loved him more than she hated Thanksgiving, and so she put up with two of them.

At least Fitz was at the first one. Unfortunately, so was Chris Burgh. The Williams extended family believed in honoring the dead by inviting the dead’s terrible friends. Chris Burgh, emulating every turducken horror ever hyped by late-night television, was stuffed and triple-stuffed with longwinded factoids of a rich and famous lifestyle, as though everyone around the table wasn’t already living it.

Darcy had wanted to throw a _Town & Country_ at him. There had been more than one at hand.

Now, facing down a second Thanksgiving, she was trying for some semblance of gratitude. She did _want _to see Bing, but happiness couldn’t be absolute because Thanksgiving with the Lees meant Cal and Harry and Nina and their kind but bumbling parents and way too much snark directed at the world and way too much pandering directed at Darcy and George.

She wondered what the Bennets did for Thanksgiving. Months—it had been _months_—and she was still wondering things about the Bennets (well, one particular Bennet) every day. An image came to mind of Eli ranting in frustration at an incorrigible pot of gravy. She could see him trying to cook the whole dinner, and hating it bitterly, but not so bitterly that he couldn’t slip in a witty riposte or two.

That made Darcy smile. And then she frowned, because—did she really have a right to smile over Eli? Had pain, in fading, left behind something more permanent?

George napped on and off for the rest of the ride. Darcy reminded herself that George was always nodding off on long drives, he wasn’t overtired, she wasn’t neglecting him.

She knew him better than anyone, and she still worried over the silliest things.

Bing, resplendent in a plaid shirtdress, greeted them with a wreath of autumn leaves in her hands. “I made it!” she announced.

“I gathered,” Darcy said, presuming wreath, not dress.

“Oh. Is it that bad?” Bing asked, face falling slightly.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Darcy said. “It’s actually very symmetrical.”

“Thanks!” Bing hugged Darcy and George all at once. “You are in for something great. The turkey is _crackling _and I got Mom to put sausage in the stuffing. I’m so excited.”

Darcy braced herself for a flood of holiday well-wishing. Cal’s hug lasted a little too long; that was to be expected, as was the fact that he was trying to fuse L.L. Bean’s rustic charms with higher-fashion sensibility.

But dinner _was _delicious. That left Darcy no excuse to pick at her food the way she always did at holidays. It wasn’t easily explained aloud. Inwardly she could acknowledge that memory was not always kind to present joy.

For the sake of everyone else, Darcy endured. She hung back as usual, watched George’s smile and listened to Bing’s laugh and rolled her eyes after dinner when they dragged her into playing board games. The Lees were comfortably at home. Maybe George felt at home here too; maybe everyone did except Darcy.

She shut her eyes for a brief moment. She imagined Eli, shirt-sleeves rolled up, hair falling over his brow, kids running around, in some pretense of helping with dinner—a different vision than the one she’d seen before.

Darcy suppressed a gasp. Her indulgence of solitary thoughts had gone too far. She was owed no dream of Eli in a future that she knew all too well could never, ever be. She found herself alert and awake at once—shame could do that to you—and she declined the next round of Scrabble to disappear into Mrs. Lee’s sewing room. She’d find a book on one of the floor-to-ceiling shelves, and occupy herself alone.

“_Bored_ of the games?” Cal quipped, unimaginatively, before she even had her hand on the spine of _The Outsiders_.

She slid him a sideways glance to acknowledge the pun and dropped her hand. “Just needed a little air that didn’t smell like turkey.”

“I—we’ve missed you,” Cal said, standing by the window. “I’m in New York a lot, but always on business, so I never get around to—I know, it’s no excuse.”

“Business is always an excuse,” Darcy said. “I’m in New York on business too, you know.”

“Of course.” Cal nodded. His hair always moved with him; never a strand out of place; never an errant curl. Not the sort of hair you wanted to rake your hands through. Not _Eli’s_ hair, more to the point. “How’s the firm?”

“I like it,” Darcy said dully. “I like to be busy.”

“You’re so ambitious,” Cal said, with disproportionate admiration. “It’s rare to find, in…”

He had been going to say _women_, she was sure. Darcy shrugged. “I suppose so.”

“Can’t believe it’s the end of November.” Cal shifted his hands into the pockets of his designer pants—were those khakis? Why were designer khakis permitted to inflict themselves upon the world?—and shook his head. “Seems like just yesterday we were having quite the wild summer.”

_Wild_. That was one word for it. Darcy wondered, almost curiously, what Cal would do if she told him that she’d declared her love to Eli Bennet on a rain-streaked Manhattan night. And that _he _had turned _her_ down.

“Upstate is beautiful,” she said, “But it doesn’t seem quite real.”

“I thought it was all dull backwater crap,” Cal said. Which meant he’d either been sarcastic in saying it was wild, or he was being inconsistent, because he had wanted something else to say. Darcy found that whichever it really was, she didn’t care. “And the _people_. God, do you remember that guy—Eli?” He lowered his voice. “James...look, James wasn’t bad, but _we_ both know he wasn’t going places. Eli, though? What a—”

“I don’t know,” Darcy said, with the kind of coolness she’d perfected for most of her life. “My opinion of him improved over time.”

Cal wasn’t pleased. “Oh, right,” he said, with something dangerously close to a sneer. “I forgot. You were into him. _Wild_ summer, huh?”

“I’m surprised you still have room for being a jealous prick after your mother’s diner,” Darcy said, unsmiling.

Cal flushed and looked away. “Sorry,” he muttered. “Joking. It really _is_ good to see you. Sometime, you and George—”

“We’re here now,” Darcy interjected, attempting to restore some graciousness to her tone. She didn’t need to fight with Cal on Thanksgiving; he simply needed to behave. “And I think I hear Bing calling, don’t you?”


	26. to Pemberley, then, they would go

_“Surely I may enter the county with impunity.”_

_i._

A master’s thesis, Eli understood, would typically be written over two semesters. His was limping into its third. He’d chosen a flexible program to account for just that possibility, but even revised deadlines encroached anyway. The apocalypse must come to pass, at least in the written word.

Winter’s shift to spring that year was a vicious paradox: long hours stretched like drumskins over longer days, yet the weeks ticked by at an alarming pace. His advisor, who had seemed like a ghost with an overcrowded inbox, was suddenly present. Video calls, hitching across the Bennets’ recalcitrant Wi-Fi, became a common frustration.

Eli forgot to shave. Sometimes he forgot to eat, but James usually remedied that. Mom was interested and worried by turns, telling him that he of all the family couldn’t afford to ruin his health. The rest of them teased him and avoided him, for Eli was snappish under stress.

Gemma had vanished after Christmas. She had, on the whole, made less attempts at connection than Eli expected. He was glad that memories of her were a relative casualty of his narrowed focus.

He was glad to forget. 

The defense was in April. Eli did _that _in person, driving two hours to the Albany campus on a Thursday morning. He didn’t remember much about the experience, less an act of forgetting than a blur of nerves. What stood out most, upon reflection, was the desolate ugliness of the academic buildings and the disappointing gyro he had for lunch. All day, somehow, he’d been stung by an acute awareness of his point, proven. None of it mattered. He’d spun a gossamer idea about grief, loss, and the stubborn frailty of the human mind.

For what?

“Are you relieved?” Cody asked, when he got home.

“Of course,” said Eli.

“You done trying to grow a beard?” said Levi.

Eli rolled his eyes, at that. Rubbed his strangely smooth jaw only when he was out of the room. Anticlimactic was one word he could hang like a cheap flyer on the entire experience, the hoped-for degree. The thesis had, despite its flaws, given him purpose. That was over now; the ending left him with himself.

Truth was, he hadn’t really been himself since the end of last August.

Maybe since last June.

Some years turned life inside out and weren’t gracious enough to set things to rights again. Eli saved money through May. Didn’t so much as crack a book, unless Mom asked him to read to her. She was on a new anti-inflammatory for her immobile hips. It made her eyes dry.

His laptop gathered dust. He gathered grime. That was a given, at the body shop.

“Uncle Will called for you earlier,” Levi said, after dinner one night. Mark was doing the dishes. Eli had absented himself from the stuffy indoor air; was sitting on the picnic table, now. Alone, until Levi.

“Yeah?”

“You were upstairs.” A shrug. “I told him you’d call him back.”

“You could have just given me the phone,” Eli pointed out.

“I was on the couch,” said Levi, like that explained everything. Then, to Eli’s surprise, he settled down beside him, resting his feet on the bench. It was past seven, but the glamour of sunshine hadn’t yet been shaken from the sky.

Eli felt like conversation was probably a good idea, so he said,

“You’re graduating in a month.” He and Levi had a weird dynamic; they were probably the most at odds of any of the brothers, but at the same time…Levi’s future was his _job_. If it wasn’t his job, who else would do anything about it?

“Yeah, that’s the good shit. Getting to sweat in polyester for a couple hours,” Levi said, pulling a face. School had never had much appeal for him.

“It’s not that bad,” Eli said. “Uniformity softens absurdity, I promise.”

“Nerd,” Levi muttered. Eli elbowed him.

“This nerd could still kick your ass—and will—come to that.”

Levi laughed, but stopped when his phone vibrated. He turned away to read the text, so that his shoulder blocked Eli’s view.

“What’s up?”

“Nothing.” Levi pocketed his phone, gaze hooded. He hopped off the table and raised a mock salute. “Stop brooding. You’re not James.”

“And you’re not Oprah, asshole.” Eli flipped him off, and Levi returned the courtesy.

Eli’s grin faded when he was alone again. It wasn’t like Levi to be secretive. He loved to shout his exploits from the rooftops, unless he was sure of getting in trouble.

_Probably some girl he and Cody are feuding over_, Eli decided. He never knew what the right things were to brood over, anyway. How could he? He wasn’t James.

Eli shook away yet another opportunity for self-examination, and called Uncle Will.

“Everything OK?”

“You sound like James,” Uncle Will said. Most people sounded weird over the phone, but Uncle Will didn’t; he sounded exactly the same as always. Like a bad connection couldn’t change his voice.

“Second person who’s compared me to James today,” Eli chuckled. “I suppose I should accept the compliment, though I’m very undeserving.” Where _was_ James, anyway? Right, still at work. Someone had to pay the bills, and since Eli’s shifts had been slacked around his defense time, May’s frugality hadn’t yet evened out the paycheck-to-payout ratio.

“Nothing’s wrong,” Uncle Will assured him. “It’s actually...well, it’s good news if you can afford to take us up on it.”

“I like good news,” Eli said. He did. It was rather rare, among Bennets.

“What are you doing on Memorial Day?”

Eli rubbed the back of his neck. “Uh, Dad usually says ‘barbecue’ when what he really means is a lot more beer than grilling. Some annoying people show up. The usual.”

“Molly and I were thinking of taking a weekend with you, to celebrate the old thesis.”

“I’d have to check with work,” Eli said, like he hadn’t just been planning to seek out extra shifts. He never missed a chance to be selfish, it seemed. “But—yeah, thank you. That would be...that would be fantastic.” He was ineloquent in the face of unexpected kindness.

Uncle Will asked, “How does Block Island sound?”

Block Island, objectively, sounded beautiful. But something was nagging in Eli’s brain, something he couldn’t quite place, warning him away. Since little nagging _somethings_ weren’t concrete, though, he heard himself answer, “Wow, sounds great.”

“I’ll be in touch with the details,” Uncle Will said, pleased. “I ran it by your mom, to make sure she was OK with it. She is.”

Eli thanked him again. He’d have to check in with Mom, too, make sure that she wasn’t biting down too much pride, yessing Uncle Will. Eli was her favorite, so she wanted him to have everything.

She also wished she could be the one to give it to him.

When he hung up, he remembered, too late, what had been plaguing him.

Fitz’s cousin had a Block Island summer home.

Fitz’s cousin was Darcy.

When he’d learned the first fact, he hadn’t known the second. Eli pressed the edge of his phone against the bridge of his nose. What had he decided, about forgetting? That it was something to rejoice over?

Jesus. He was a fool. That was his new decision, based on longstanding evidence.

A complete, ass-backwards fool.

But there was no getting out of it now, of course. It wasn’t the sort of thing he could explain to Uncle Will. Bennets could rationalize, and for all his ideological rebellions, Eli _was_ a Bennet.

_You’re not going to see her. You’d be a tourist. She won’t be scoping out the island. She won’t even be there; they probably avoid the big holiday weekends..._

He swore under his breath, and noted that the sun had gone down.

Dad and the boys—minus Levi, suspiciously—were glued to the TV as usual. Eli headed upstairs.

“Glad to see another human,” Mom said, putting down a copy of _Heart of Darkness_. Her eyes must be less irritated, today.

“You don’t want to see all the humans who live here, do you?” Eli asked.

“No.” She smiled, scrutinizing him. “You look pensive. You look pensive a lot lately.”

“It was the thesis,” Eli assured her. _Was. _That was a month ago, now. He sat down on the floor beside her chair, back against the wall, with his legs stretched out. “I chose a depressing subject, and therefore I had to fit the mood. Method writing, you know, like method acting. It’s passed.”

This was all bullshit.

Mom saw through it. “Am I to be so certain this isn’t about a girl?” She asked, poking him in the shoulder. “I hear you were pretty hung up on Gemma. Heard she was back.”

“No,” Eli said, with a grimace. “No, this isn’t about Gemma.” If it was about a girl, it shouldn’t be. “I had my rumspringa. Last year. And you know how well _that_ worked out.”

“Apocalyptic,” Mom said dryly. “_Ergo_, this apathy. How apropos.”

“How alliterative.”

“That too.” She ruffled his hair. “OK, so it’s not about a girl. Then let me tell you: if you’re moping up here to make sure I’m alright with your trip with the Gardiners, the answer is yes. You know I hate when you leave, but I hate to watch you languish here more.” She sighed. “Hate to watch anyone languishing here.”

“I’m not languishing, Mom.”

“A bit. You wear too much blue.”

He blinked lazily up at her. “It flatters my complexion.”

“Yes, it does.” She came as close as she ever did to beaming. “Your father was handsome, you know. Only reason I married him. You and James managed to get the looks. Who the hell knows what happened with Mark.”

Eli couldn’t quite laugh at that. “Speaking of your reprehensible children, does something seem weird about Levi recently?”

“Levi and I are barely related. Remember what you just said, about the humans in this house?”

That humor again. Too sharp for comfort, for all it was familiar. “Yeah, he’s a handful. I just...he seems off.”

“He’ll be fine once the ballet comes around,” Mom said, shrugging. “Bringing back Gemma, too, if _you_ want her.”

Eli said lightly, “I don’t.”

He slept fitfully that night, though the trip was weeks away.

He wouldn’t see Darcy, but he was returning to her territory. It brought all the memories back.

_ii._

The three years after the end of everything—after the crash—Darcy and George lived with their aunt and uncle. Their father’s brother had had no children of his own. He and his wife raised Jack Russell terriers for show, named their yachts after flowers and their dogs after Greek heroes, and otherwise turned Darcy’s life to hell.

She returned the favor.

The worst thing they’d done had been well-intended, actually. They insisted on commemorating anniversaries in a somber, memorialized way. Candles and silver-framed photographs, murmuring friends of the family, blandly Protestant prayers. All sentimental tripe that traumatized the shit out of George, who would rather spend birthdays and other, worse days, pretending that their parents were away on a trip and not dead at all.

Darcy almost preferred the forced therapy, the curfews, the goddamn drug tests. She could curse and kick at those. She could read them the riot act when they called her withdrawn and rebellious, called her _mother _withdrawn, mysterious, cold. They said they were trying to understand her. Trying to save George. They put Darcy on suicide watch, which was stupid as hell, honestly. She’d drink too much and embarrass Chris Burgh at dinner parties, but she wouldn’t have left George alone.

At the time, she called _them_ heartless. Knew that they were selfish. Learned later on that the two weren’t always the same. Their aunt and uncle had cared about William’s children. Darcy just hadn’t wanted their conditional love.

The day she turned eighteen, and stepped into the money and power that was all her father had left behind him, she didn't look back.

“I was a relentless bitch,” she had said to Fitz, once. “I don’t quite regret it.”

“Didn’t ask you too,” Fitz had assured her.

She’d changed very quickly, after that. Become what Bing or Chris Burgh or even Eli Bennet would recognize, now. She _was _cold, like her mother hadn’t been. She wasn’t in the business of being happy. She spent her time _not_ thinking of a good many things.

Eight years later, Fitz appeared to have forgotten all about this, in harping on his latest plot.

“I never celebrate my birthday,” she said, not for the first time. “Why would I change my mind this year?”

“It’s not just your birthday,” Fitz said. “Don’t get a big head on account of being born. Save that ego-trip for celebrating one year graduated. Or hell, pretend you’re not celebrating at all—just think about a three-day weekend when your firm is actually letting you off the hook for half a minute. I don’t know. Seems like a time let loose.”

He was leaving. He had _said_ he was leaving, and yet here he was, hanging on the edge of the door trying to coax her into a party. Like that was something that could be coaxed out of Darcy in the last five minutes of a given conversation. _How_ long had Fitz known her?

“Go buy yourself two shots and drink one for me,” Darcy retorted. “Three-day weekend means I can finally expedite some doc review, so stop trying to make this a thing.”

“Stop pretending that three people and a cake make a party.” He paused. “OK, three people and a cake on an _island_. Still not necessarily a—”

“Go away, Fitz.”

“I’m going! I said was going.” And Fitz walked away whistling, so she couldn’t exactly claim a victory. Darcy glared at his retreating back and shut the door.

“What’s the matter?” George asked, coming up beside her. He had his eyebrows drawn together, concerned, but they were all but lost under his bangs.

Darcy pushed his hair off his forehead. “You need a haircut.”

“Dude, it’s called...personal style.”

“Hmm. I think it’s called ‘the Idol.’” She rubbed her shoulder, which was tense, and frowned. “Did you eat dinner yet?”

George looked more worried than ever. “Darcy, we just ate. With Fitz. Don’t you remember?”

She put her face in her hands. “Damn it. I’m going crazy, aren’t I?”

George tugged her elbow and gently pushed her onto the couch. “Maybe...chill for a second?”

“I don’t want another party,” she said pettishly. “Fitz _says _it will just be us, but the next thing you know…he’ll bring his friends, tell them about the Island house…”

“You could ask Bing.”

She did want to see Bing. Bing loved Darcy’s birthday more than Darcy did, wouldn’t mind celebrating it a week early.

“You are not on my side,” she said, just for the sake of principle.

George shrugged. “Doesn’t have to be a big thing. I’d like to get away, though.” He yawned, rubbed his eyes, and Darcy knew she’d lost.

“Just Bing.”

“You should probably ask her brothers, too.”

“Why?”

“Well, we did something for Memorial Day last year. At their place.”

“Right.” Darcy pinched the bridge of her nose. George got along perfectly well with Cal and Harry, and just because she had cooled on them by a few dozen degrees didn’t mean it was time to snub the connection altogether. “Fine, George. We’ll have a regular bash. And then _I _will bash my head against the wall to provide percussive accompaniment.”

That made George laugh.

“It can be a better summer, you know,” he said, after a moment.

Darcy was quiet. She _had_ been thinking of it: the last almost-year, three months of falling into something far too quickly, then the intervening eight of falling apart. She said, “Maybe.”

George slung himself over the armchair and said, almost meditatively, “You don’t talk that much about Eli anymore.”

Darcy ran the edge of her teeth over her lower lip. “I guess I don’t.” Didn’t mean she didn’t still think about him, holding the pain like a prize.

“I wish I could have met him,” George said. He sounded wistful. “Just...it would have been cool.”

“I think he would have liked you,” Darcy said. She wasn’t lying. She and George were miles apart in terms of likeability; of course Eli would have liked George.

Silenced reigned, for a little while. Darcy thought of work, and parties—too many parties—and Eli, because Eli had a way of filling silences.

Eli had hated, almost as much as she did, that Bing always came with her brothers, that joy always came with the memory of something else.

Of course, Eli also hated her.

But perhaps his hatred was better than nothing. It meant that he _felt_. Something. About her.

_You’re pathetic._

George shifted in his chair. He was ready to say something else. Mercifully, it was a change of subject. “You know, it’s not so bad now that we spend so much time in New York anyway,” he said.

“What’s not so bad?” Darcy asked, though she already knew. It was the other thought that filled her mind, always—George, and what he was doing, and where he was going, and when it was time to hold on and when it was that she needed to let go.

“Juilliard.” George propped his chin on his graceful pianist’s hand and said, “I’m starting in a few months. Finally feel ready, to be honest. But—I want you to be OK with it, too.”

At times like this, Darcy wondered if he’d taken his gap year for her. Working with his trusted music tutor, of course, hadn’t been a hardship for him—but what had Darcy done but be glad to have him keeping hours that were convenient for her own mad schedule? When she needed him, George was home.

He shouldn't have to be. She felt the bitter unfairness of it, when it was too late to change the past. Felt the selfishness, if not the heartlessness.

“I’m very happy for you,” she said. “And more than anything, I want you to be happy, yourself. Independent of me.”

“Cool,” George said, shying away from further revelations. He grinned, a little shy. “So…happy days, all that, we’re good for the party?”

Trapped. Trapped beyond all chance of escape. But Darcy smiled. “Yes,” she said. “You and Fitz are too much for me.”


	27. never a place for which nature had done more

_“Their eyes instantly met, and the cheeks of both were overspread with the deepest blush.”_

_i._

Freedom dawned on a perfect Saturday, driving into the heart of the sunrise itself. 

Shading his eyes from the glare, but not unaware of its warmth and wonder, Eli read halfway through _Perelandra_ during the ride to Rhode Island. On the ferry, he opened himself up to the world a little, leaning into the stiff salt air. The breeze and the chatter of gulls, the sway of the waves and the chatter of voices, gave him the curious privilege of inner silence. The world made noise around him. He almost relaxed.

And looked far too serious, as it turned out.

“Eli, hon,” Aunt Molly said, resting a hand on his shoulder, “This is supposed to be _fun_ for you.”

He started, grinned. “It’s gorgeous,” he said, hand reaching to the line of the horizon. “And I’m with the part of my family that I actually like. I promise I’ll be a model tourist, once we arrive. I’ll ask all the best questions, and buy all the most disgusting t-shirts.”

She laughed. “Crowds will be awful, I just know it. But I had a good friend who used to live here—her family had kept a property from a long while back, so they weren’t filthy rich or anything. She told me the local spots.”

“Inside information…just the thing,” Uncle Will gloated, coming up beside them. They all watched together how the sun streamed down on the water, how each breaker crest threw it back, spangled and smooth as light shot through glass.

The ferry landed at last. There _were_ too many people, of course, most clustered around the moped rentals.

Eli didn’t actually want a moped. Some appearances had to be kept up.

“We’ll walk,” Aunt Molly decided cheerfully, surveying the mob. And crowded as it was, walking allowed repose. The main streets were lined with shops and overpriced cafes; trimarans and sailboats cruised like sleek seabirds against the docks. Eli took it all in. Not so _very _far from home, yet it felt like another continent. On the crest of the hill were the finer houses, old Victorian mansions that almost shimmered between the sun and ocean-blaze.

The jewel of the Island, Aunt Molly assured him, was the Spring House. Their own bed-and-breakfast was markedly humbler. The Spring House sprawled benevolently on the hilltop, all white-painted board, red shingles, and dozens of gabled windows. The lip of its wide yard was ringed by Adirondack chairs that faced the water. That water was bluer than peacock shimmer, and it stretched like paradise, a starting point carried over and outward to no definite end.

“It’s heaven,” Uncle Will said, echoing Eli’s thoughts. 

Eli said nothing. It was enough to observe; to more privately imagine a life in which he could have been more than a mere tourist. Darcy would be, no doubt, an honored guest at all the grandest tables here. She would not need to gawk in wonder. This, to her, could be every other day.

He sighed; it was a day for sighing in pure air.

They left the Spring House in the afternoon. Despite its popularity, the Island did boast more secluded regions. It took something of a hike to reach them, but Eli enjoyed the sandy roads underfoot and the winds that shook trees and beach roses alike.

There were back roads. There were slender-fingered inlets. There were charming houses, old enough to have stories, and there were lighthouses pinning the corners of the Island.

“Can we visit the lighthouses?” Eli asked, reapplying sunscreen to the back of his neck. He’d always had an affinity for them. A lighthouse keeper would have a magical life, manning the passage of ships and living in superior solitude. At least that was what his childhood books had said.

“Of course,” Aunt Molly said. When she smiled it looked a bit like Dad’s smile, except that it didn’t bring with it such a tangle of emotions. “But first,” she added, “There is the grandest house on the island—the grandest private house, that is. I just saw a sign pointing us in the direction of the road it’s on. It’s called Pemberley.”

“Fancy name,” said Uncle Will.

“Fancier house, from everything I hear.” Aunt Molly squinted under the brim of her hand. “It’s the residence of a very wealthy family, and it’s not publicly advertised, but Anna—my friend—said that when the family’s away they let people come in and see the house and grounds. It’s the largest privately-owned property on the island.”

“Huh,” Eli said. He was still more favorably disposed to the lighthouses, but he was their guest, and should be polite.

“If it were just another fine house, I wouldn’t care,” Aunt Molly said, seeming to sense his consternation. “The Spring House satisfies me on that score. But the grounds are beautiful. Footpaths and a _fantastic_ view of the shore. Not a tourist trap, either. I owe Anna a gift basket.”

“Mighty nice of the family to open it to anyone,” Uncle Will said. “Maybe the fantastically wealthy are not _all_ created equal.”

“I doubt equality concerns them in any form,” Eli jibed, but he nodded to Aunt Molly’s questioning brows. “Sure, I’m all about private beaches and fantastic views.”

He was surprised to hear this Pemberley place described so superlatively; he had thought Darcy would not want to be second-best here or anywhere, yet the house could not _be _Darcy’s. Darcy would not want tourists of any kind traipsing on her property.

Pemberley had iron gates that stood open wide enough to walk through. A sign that said, _No cars, mopeds, or parties larger than (5) people_ hung on the bars; the text was reproduced in Spanish.

“Official,” was Uncle Will’s comment.

Pemberley house was in a league of its own. It was pale green, built in the Victorian style, with dark gray shutters and elaborate white wooden lacework along the roof. A wide veranda porch wrapped around it, and the yard sloped gently downwards to a protective thicket that did nothing to conceal the glory of the view. A good part of the island was visible, and so was an even greater length of the shore. Paths paved with flagstones precipitated down the side of the lawn, and no doubt, plunged through the thicket to a beach.

Madly, Eli thought, _this is what I wanted, for Mom and James—and it can never be_.

Imagination was so ambitious, and so free as to be cruel.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Aunt Molly said. “I want to see the house. Must be a dream inside.”

Eli and Uncle Will did not argue. They climbed carefully up the broad front steps, and Aunt Molly, bolder than they, rang the bell.

A middle-aged woman in a linen sheath dress answered the door.

“You’re our third set of visitors today,” she said cheerfully. She had dark eyes and short, iron-gray hair. “I’m afraid the secret will soon be out. It’s always discovered by the end of the summer, and people lobby to get larger groups in, or even cars. Winter brings us solitude again.”

“It is alright for us to stop by, isn’t it?” Aunt Molly asked, more tentatively.

“Oh, of course. I manage the estate when the family is gone. It’s a long-held tradition to share the beauty of this place with others. One just has to _preserve_ the beauty by keeping the numbers as small as possible.” She opened the door and invited them in.

Jo Turner, as she introduced herself, was an accomplished guide. The place was exquisitely furnished, and before they were done marveling at one room, they were led to another. There was even a library. Eli found himself sighing again.

“This house has been in the family for ninety-three years,” Jo said proudly, leading them up a spiral staircase. A spiral staircase! Eli realized he was gaping and shut his mouth again. One must be subtle in one’s abject appreciation of quaint Victorian island opulence.

The hall at the top of the stairs was lined with family portraits. Some old; some shining new.

Eli stopped short, and also stopped breathing.

Darcy. It was Darcy. Unmistakably, absolutely, _Darcy_. Probably seventeen, a senior portrait, but one for the fantastically rich. Very John Singer Sargent.

_Darcy._

“Is that—” he found his voice with some difficulty—“Darcy Williams?”

Jo’s professional charm heated to a proud glow. “You know Darcy?”

Eli cleared his throat. “Uh, yes. We—a little.”

“That was based on her graduation photograph. Most of the pictures, you see, are family photographs, but since—well. Her parents passed away over a decade ago. The recent photographs are mostly of her brother, George.”

“This is the Williams’ home?” Uncle Will asked, mild in tone, but with a significant glance of surprise at Eli.

“Oh yes. They spend most of their time in Manhattan, now, but this is their summer home. How did you meet Darcy?” The question was directed to Eli.

“She and Bi—Beatrice Lee, we, uh, met last summer. Upstate New York.” Eli’s powers of speech had all but abandoned him.

“Bing! Such a lovely girl.” Jo had not stopped beaming. “I’ll have to tell Darcy you came. They’re all coming tomorrow for the holiday weekend, so you’re fortunate to have caught the last day for visitors. We’ll take that sign off the gate and shut them, I assure you. But to know that friends happened by! What a surprise.”

“Oh,” Eli said, still stumbling, “You don’t need to. I wouldn’t want to remind her of...the fact that people tour the property. I mean. She must not—enjoy thinking about that.”

“Ah, but she’s so generous,” Jo said, smiling up at the portrait. Darcy looked very serious there—serious and young. “I’ve been working with their family for over twenty years, and I have always said, good-natured children grow up to be good-natured, too. Darcy was always the sweetest child. Sensitive. Loyal. _Just. _Losing her parents was very hard for her. I don’t judge her in the least for anything she did during _that _time. But thereafter? As responsible as you please. Oh, I suppose she’s serious, unless you know how to make her laugh. And I imagine some people think her proud, but that’s just because she has so much on her shoulders.”

Eli was very conscious of his relatives’ gaze, and stared straight ahead, trying for a neutral expression. The glorious house felt suddenly confining. A terrifying thought flashed through his mind—being locked in, having to stay until Darcy arrived, and then—

_God. _It was unthinkable.

But Jo Turner was leading them on, farther into this dream-world, where the doors led to rooms that Darcy knew, past windows she had looked from, floorboards she had walked. And to hear her called generous, sensitive, loyal...It was not so much surprising as it painful, to hear confirmed what had, since her letter, been in his heart.

And all to the scent and whisper of a sea breeze!

“This is one of the loveliest rooms in the house,” Mrs. Turner announced. “I don’t often show it. But to friends...” she trailed off significantly. Eli swallowed.

“How exquisite,” Aunt Molly said. And it _was_. The floor was uncarpeted: just broad, white-sanded boards. There were pale blue toile sofas and curtains. At the center of the room, a fantastic grand piano reigned. Behind it, French Windows opened out onto a view of the water.

“That piano was a gift to George,” Mrs. Turner said. “For his sixteenth birthday. She dotes on him—her only brother, you know. He’s going to Juilliard this year, and he’s brilliant.”

“I have heard,” Eli said. “And—that must be them?” There was a framed photograph on the piano of a smiling girl, perhaps eight, holding a round-cheeked baby whose hair stood straight up on his head.

“Oh, yes. It’s one of my favorites.”

Eli was sure that everyone could hear his heart beating. How much longer would they have to be inside? What was next, a tour of the bedrooms? God forbid. He didn’t need to think about Darcy in pajamas. That said, he had already _seen_ Darcy in pajamas—long ago, at Netherfield. He had hated her then. Her hair had fallen over her shoulders and it had been...really hot, actually. He’d been annoyed about it, and _shit_, now he was thinking about it again. Darcy, Darcy, Darcy.

If God existed, God was laughing now.

“Would it be alright if we looked at the property?” Uncle Will asked. Maybe he had noticed that Eli was about to die, and was trying to be thoughtful.

Mrs. Turner set them loose on the grounds and wished them very well. She still had not rescinded her insistence on mentioning their visit to Darcy, and there was nothing Eli could do about that.

“Well,” Aunt Molly observed, “That was...quite illuminating. What a coincidence! Are you _sure_ it’s the same Darcy, Eli?”

“It’s definitely her,” Eli answered numbly. The sunshine was beating down; he felt ill. Unsettled. It was the same feeling that he used to get in school when he’d realized that he’d screwed up a question only _after _he turned in the test. That insistent, absolute _knowing_ sucked.

“A very different description,” Uncle Will interjected. “I mean, you told us she was snobbish at best.”

“I know what I said,” Eli said gloomily, feeling oppressed (though with no one to blame but himself). “I think we should probably get out of here, don’t you think?”

“It doesn’t have to be awkward,” Aunt Molly assured him. “No damage done—Jo will probably forget about us, and nobody’s coming till tomorrow. Don’t you want to see the beach?”

Eli didn’t know what he wanted. He was too consumed by what he should have done—he should have given his aunt and uncle some sort of warning about Darcy’s connection to the Island, because now it seemed like he’d been hiding it from them. Goddamn it.

“We’ll see the beach,” said Uncle Will, patting Eli’s shoulder.

At least the beach was away from the house. They picked their way down the footpath and walked along the shore. It felt remote; other houses were visible, but the blur of island noise was diminished. Eli tried to steady himself. _Be grateful. _A narrow escape, but an escape all the same.

Aunt Molly and Uncle Will wandered one way, and needing a bit more time to collect himself, Eli went the other, keeping closer to the thickets that hugged the sloping side of the yard. Eli let the tension in his shoulders relax, and watched the water ebb and glitter.

He had almost convinced himself that he was being ridiculous when he heard a twig snap underfoot, somewhere behind him. Eli turned.

Darcy was coming down the path.

_ii._

“Let’s all go together,” Bing had said. But Darcy had declined; even though Jo would keep the island house in order, she wanted to be there before her guests were. Also, she liked the freedom of driving, so she took the Bentley over on the ferry and left the chartered flight to Bing and her brothers and George.

Fitz, for all his insistence on a celebration, had had to bow out of the Block Island venture altogether. Friends of his were eloping to Rome, and in a gesture that Darcy personally thought unsuited to elopements, they had a short guestlist. Fitz was on it. He made it up to Darcy and George with by renting a rooftop garden in Tribeca and hosting dinner for three.

Darcy had enjoyed it. Now she had to take her own turn at being gracious, and welcome the Lees without Fitz to divert her. At least Bing would bring joy.

As if to comfort her, the weather was sublime when she arrived. She drove to Pemberley with the windows down and thought that perhaps she wouldn’t dread the crowds as much as always. The house would still be open for visitors today, but when she pulled in, the place looked quiet.

Achingly quiet. It had been a long year, with few opportunities to revisit the past. Not the longest in Darcy’s life, by any means, but one that opened up her own heart with the precision of a surgeon’s scalpel, and found within that heart very little worth saving.

She hadn’t forgotten Eli, although she knew that she should.

It was a day for sighing.

Wearing jeans and no makeup was enough to make her feel a thousand miles away from the firm and Manhattan and everything she always had to be and do. Today she would find her place again, and tomorrow and the next day she would survive the celebrations that Fitz and George had believed would do her good.

Jo was probably busy getting the house ready at the moment. Darcy wouldn’t trouble her. No, she’d walk along the beach. _Her_ beach. This house, with all its idyllic beauty, was the sort of thing most people thought about when they longed for wealth.

They didn’t know that wealth did little for loss and loneliness.

At the head of the footpath, Darcy picked a few early roses and cradled them in her hands. They smelled like summer. She looked down at them and smiled; she looked up and saw Eli Bennet.

It had not been quite a year. Had it been ten, it would not have mattered. You had a heartbeat until you died, didn’t you?

She was blushing. She, who prided herself on not blushing, could feel the heat rising in her face.

What was odd was that he was blushing too. It reached his ears. He had nice ears. She’d noticed before.

“Oh,” Darcy said, inanely. “Eli.”

“Darcy,” he said. He looked as lost as she felt.

There was nothing else to be done—that was what she told herself, but another part of her wanted this, wanted to run to him, and it was all she could do to keep her steps measured and calm. She stepped farther down the path, coming to face him.

There was a reason she always wore heels. He was a lot taller than her when she wasn’t wearing heels.

“I thought you were in Meryton,” she said.

“I...am not.”

“Oh.”

He pursed his lips and rubbed the back of his neck. Then he put his hands in his pockets. All of this was attractive, without effort, and without concern for Darcy’s heartrate. Eli said, “I mean, uh, my aunt and uncle and I are on a sort of vacation.”

“For the holiday weekend,” Darcy supplied, as helpfully as she could. It was like her whole being had missed him, without any right. Suddenly, she realized, _he doesn’t hate me_. Or at least he didn’t seem to, and her heart rang in her ears.

“Yeah.” His eyes widened a little, eyebrows up, and he said, all in a rush, “I didn’t know you were here. Or that it was your house. My aunt—we just came because no one was around, and it’s beautiful, anyway. I just—we wouldn’t—we never would have come if we’d known you’d be here. Or that it was your house.”

“You just followed the sign on the gate,” Darcy said. She smiled. It seemed like the right thing to do, to encourage him. But what had happened between them that he should need encouragement, or that she should be the one to offer it? “It’s fine. Really.”

The silence stretched out like a body of blue water. She wanted to bridge it. She wanted him.

She always wanted him.

“Is your family doing well?” she asked. She had to say _something_.

“Yes. They’re...Levi’s graduating in a few weeks,” he said. Then he looked down. They all still lived at home, she remembered. The youngest graduating, and nowhere for any of them to go. She did not think it shameful, but she knew that Eli did, and she wished she could tell him, without hurting him, that she thought him ambitious. Fitted for a future. But she couldn’t, for that was a sore topic too. He’d _tried_ to get out of Meryton, and then in August—

“Fitz misses you,” she managed to say. “He was supposed to come this weekend, but he couldn’t—he’ll be so sorry not to see you.”

“Well, I wouldn’t really have been...” He looked down, and then up at her again. “It would be great to see him sometime. How was his latest year of teaching?”

“He’s Fitz,” she said. If he could hear her heartbeat now, and surely he could, it was so loud, just like that time they were dancing—if he could hear it, she was going to die. She just was. And that was foolish, but like so many foolish things in the word, it was inevitable. “Everything he does is great. I mean, he can’t cook as well as he thinks he can. But other than that.”

“I sympathize,” Eli said. “About the cooking, not about being great at everything.”

“How—how is your thesis?” She needed something to say. And then she remembered that she only knew about the thesis from Fitz or Bing, not from Eli directly, so he would know they’d been talking about him.

He did look surprised, but not (she hoped) offended. “It’s over,” he said. “And although I wrote about the the apocalypse, the world still turns on.”

“The world always turns on, doesn’t it?” Darcy asked. But that was a loaded question—why had she asked it?

Eli’s ears were very red again. Maybe it was sunburn. Maybe it had nothing to do with her. “Yes,” he said. “I guess it does.”

“Eli?”

Darcy started. As usual, she had tunnel vision around Eli. She had failed to notice that Eli’s aunt and uncle (that must be who it was) had come up beside them and were watching with interest. Middle-aged, wise people always watched foolish young people with interest.

“Darcy,” Eli said, biting his lips a little, “This is my aunt and uncle. Molly and Will Gardiner.”

Here was a chance—another chance, which she hadn’t expected to have—to change his opinion of her. She could be civil instead of cold. And it wasn’t even forced; she liked them at once. She shifted the roses to her left hand and held out her right. “Very pleased to meet you. I’m Darcy.”

“We’re so sorry to intrude,” said his aunt. “We had no idea the family was home.”

“It’s a pleasure,” Darcy assured her, not looking at Eli. “I came ahead—the others are coming tomorrow. The Lees, Eli. You remember them.”

“Of course.” They could not exactly meet each other’s eyes at the memory of the Lees; there was too much, too much, from the last time they had discussed Bing.

“And my brother George.” Here, she smiled at all of them, a little more quickly at Eli, because it made her pulse do strange things again, studying his face. Her next words leapt forward with longing. “Please feel free to visit any time this weekend—it is a nice getaway from the noise and bustle, isn’t it?”

_Shit_, who still said bustle?

“Very much so,” his uncle said. “That’s kind of you. It’s an exquisite place.”

“We like it very much,” Darcy said. And it was true, she and George loved it, all the more because their parents had. “I...I know that George would be glad to meet you, Eli. Would it—would it be alright if I introduced him to you, while you’re here?” She could have shaken herself, as soon as she said it, and not because of George. How could _she_ ask for anything?

But Eli smiled. No, he grinned. Darcy died, but she didn’t die. She had to keep standing there. “I’d love to meet him,” he said.

“Oh,” Darcy said, “He’ll be so happy.”

“Thank you for being so gracious about our touristy ways,” Eli’s uncle said. “We’ll be out of your hair, now, but maybe we will see you again.”

They were leaving. She didn’t want them to leave, but there was no reason why they would stay. Darcy smiled. “Of course,” she said. “It was lovely to meet you.”

Eli left last. The wind was in his hair. She couldn’t quite read his eyes. “It was coincidence, I promise,” he said. He sounded a little desperate. She had always—since the very beginning—hated when he was desperate. She wanted to return the favor. Be equal in desperation, if they could meet in nothing else. She wanted to take his hand and tell him that she herself was painfully grateful to whatever force of fate had brought him here.

_Thank you, _she wanted to say, _for the mercy of changing our last memory. _The horrible New York night would not be the end after all.

“It’s a beautiful day,” she said, instead. “And I am biased, but I think this is the most beautiful house on the island. So why should it be denied to y—to anyone who wants to enjoy it?”

Eli nodded his thanks and said nothing else but a hasty goodbye before he followed his aunt and uncle up the path. She watched him go, watched him until they all disappeared from her view, and then she sank down on the rocks and sand and clutched her knees to her chest.

Hope, Darcy told herself, was a dangerous thing.


	28. more than commonly anxious to please

_“Expressing their wish to see them all to dinner at Pemberley, before they left the country.”_

_i_ _._

In an afternoon, Block Island became too large. The walk back to the bed-and-breakfast was interminable. The sun blazed cruelly; the smell of saltwater mingled with sweat.

Eli, kicking up the dust, was prickled with restless misery. Aunt Molly and Uncle Will were decidedly too content.

“What a coincidence,” said Aunt Molly. “And she was so much—nicer than I expected.”

“I like her,” Uncle Will said, with a long and meditative look at Eli.

“She's certainly very different from last summer,” Eli hedged, trying not to squirm. Their scrutiny was patient, slow, relentless. _What could it all mean? Why did you always find her so cold? Her housekeeper, Jo, thought so well of her…_

“She’s truly lovely,” Aunt Molly stated decisively, after Eli had tried and failed to change the subject at least thrice. “Goodness, that senior portrait. She hardly looks a day older.”

“The rich and beautiful can always afford to be young—and whimsical,” Uncle Will pointed out. “Perhaps we caught her in a good mood.” Taking Eli’s side, a little, but it didn’t help.

Eli didn’t know what side to fight for anymore. He only knew he was relieved when they reached the village streets again. He needed to be far from Pemberley’s haunts. The bustle of sidewalk shops, the ferry horn’s bellow, the scattered conversation of a thousand souls—these were welcome reprieves.

Block Island was one corner of the earth. And Casablanca was one gin joint. Eli shouldn’t be thinking of the most famous romance ever seen on screen, but he was.

He tried to walk that back. Tried to think,

_You don’t even like her, dumbass, you just like her house._ But that wasn't good enough. He wasn’t a materialist. Or if he was, it was only because he’d never had very much in the material way. He never cared about money enough to change who he was, and he never cared about power as much as he cared about freedom.

Freedom was almost laughable, tangled up in indecision as he was. He couldn’t hate her, he couldn’t be indifferent to her, he couldn’t forget her.

What was left?

_The world always turns on._ She had been holding wild roses in her hands when she said that.

(This was getting ridiculous.)

When Eli dreamed of Darcy—she was always all cold except for her lips.

(Yes, sometimes Eli dreamed of Darcy’s lips.)

He’d seen her today, and realized that he had been remembering her all wrong. The shape of her jaw—the straight line of her brows—

Her warmth. She was touched by the same summer-light that made the Island beautiful, but the light belonged to her.

It had reminded him of a tucked-away memory, in the blue glow of the Lees’ midnight kitchen, when she’d seemed _alive_ for the first time.

Lot of nerves and mental poetry, inspired by someone who’d never even had a Dorito. What the hell was wrong with her?

What the hell was wrong with him?

“We should never have come here,” he said aloud, then realized that he’d fallen behind his aunt and uncle, so nobody heard him except a passing family in matching tourist t-shirts. The mom looked at him like he was crazy. Eli returned the glare and sprinted to catch up with Aunt Molly and Uncle Will.

“Let’s get some dinner, huh?” Aunt Molly suggested. She and Uncle Will seemed to be communicating telepathically now, much to Eli’s chagrin. Darcy was no longer raised as a topic of conversation.

Eli didn’t appreciate his fish and chips as much as he should have. He wanted to text James, but he wasn’t going to do that under the restaurant table, not when he was supposed to play the role a grateful nephew on vacation.

He _was_ grateful, somewhere in a mood cast hours in the past. The day had been too much, all at once.

They turned in early, thankfully. And Eli sat in the chair by his window—a window with a narrow view that was nonetheless sublime—and listened to the water and the wind.

He texted James at last. _Had the luck to run into Darcy on her island today; it was weird. Not bad tho. Thoughts?_

James didn’t reply. That, too, was weird. Eli waited, and frowned, then flung himself on the bed and played too many scenarios over in his head. None of them ended right; he fell asleep at last…

…and slept in. When he woke up, the door was pounding, and so was his head.

“Eli!”

“What?” This, muffled by a pillow.

“Eli, Darcy’s _here_!” Aunt Molly was fully panicking.

_That_ got him up. He almost ran out of the room shirtless, which—hell no, _get_ _some presence of mind_—then tugged on jeans and a clean shirt. His hair was springing up at all angles; he ran his fingers through it, dashed across the hall into the bathroom and brushed his teeth in a few frenzied motions.

Downstairs, the clock said ten. Fortunately, none of the other guests happened to be in the common hallway at that moment. It was only him and the Gardiners and Darcy, pristine and immovable, but with her lower lip tucked between her teeth.

“It was so nice of you to stop by,” Aunt Molly said.

“I hope it’s not weird,” Darcy said. “I just...asked around as to where you might be staying.”

Eli, despite his own internal turmoil, had to hold back a grin at _that_. What had she done, rung up thirty places to find them? Positively stalkerish. If things ever _weren’t _awkward between them, he was going to rub this moment in.

Wait, what future was he planning here, exactly?

Back to internal turmoil again.

“Not at all,” said Uncle Will. “You must have a busy day, too.”

“I just—I didn’t have a number, and I wondered...well, we were in town.”

“We?” Eli asked, finding his voice at last.

Darcy shifted from one foot to the other. An almost imperceptible movement, but Eli had started noticing such things. “George and Bing and I. They’re in the car.”

“Oh, please bring them in,” Aunt Molly said, waving a hand eagerly. “We’ve had breakfast—well, Eli hasn’t—but if you want anything, I’ll see—”

“Please,” Darcy said, but she made it sound more like a command, “Don’t worry about it. I’ll bring them in.”

Eli was curious; no way around it. He wanted to see Bing—and not entirely to test the sufficiency of his anger against her. Loyalty to James demanded suspicion, but Bing was still Bing. James wasn’t the only one who’d liked her at once. Eli knew that, in person, he wouldn’t be immune to her overflowing _joie de vivre._

And George! The mysterious younger brother, the most precious person in the world to Darcy—he’d heard so much and he couldn’t help but feel woefully inadequate for a meeting that must be anticipated on both sides. If George was going off Darcy’s reports of Eli, as he must, what could that mean?

Since Darcy was curiously disinclined to malign Eli the world over, George, like Fitz, might think _well_ of Eli. Eli didn’t like that. He preferred low expectations, which could be embarrassed or debunked.

Bing came in first. She looked—abashed. Eli felt a pang of sympathy. He couldn’t imagine losing James, after all. It must have sucked for Bing, too.

“Hey, Bing,” he said warmly.

Her face lit up. A little tentative, at first, but it was getting there. “Hi, Eli.”

“How’s it going?”

“It’s good. I love it here.”

“You would. So do I.”

Something relaxed in Darcy’s face.

“How is your family?” Bing asked. “I mean, _all_ your family?”

“They were fine when I last saw them.”

Bing let out a sigh that filled the room. “It’s been so long since everyone was together. The party at Harry’s house was June ninth, and then...anyway, it just feels like _ages_ ago.”

She remembered the date of the party. She was still in love with James. Eli said, kindly, “It does feel like a long time.” Then, before the moment could last too long, he added, “This is my aunt and uncle—Molly and Will. And this is Bing.”

“And George,” Darcy said, a bit authoritatively.

Even half grown-up, George looked nothing like Darcy. Perhaps that wasn’t fair; they both had fine features and bright dark eyes—but George was soft where Darcy was all edges. He looked like a kid; a kid about Levi’s age.

Eli turned to him with a smile. “Nice to meet you, George.”

“You too,” George said, holding out a hand. It was hard to say if his smile was like Darcy’s; Darcy smiled so rarely. “Darcy’s told me so much about you.”

“George,” said Darcy, a strange combination of _grim_ and_ fond_.

“Then you have had an exaggerated account,” Eli said, with as sly a look as he could muster. “And I don’t know _what_ to promise in my own defense.”

George’s mouth rounded with surprise. “Oh, no,” he said. “Darcy always describes things exactly as she sees them, and she’s a very good observer of...things.”

“_George_.” Darcy hit him, very lightly, on the shoulder. “Please. Remember, we came here for a _reason_.”

“Right,” George said, smiling again. He had clearly caught a case of hero-worship, and _that_, at least, he couldn’t have inherited from Darcy. Darcy didn’t hero-worship anyone.

But—

_I’m in love with you_. Darcy, the same standing here, had said that.

Eli had never been more grateful that his thoughts were silent, if not always safe.

“Would you—uh, would you all like to come to dinner tonight?” George asked, flitting a bashful gaze between all of them. Bing patted his shoulder.

“We’re having a little party,” Darcy said, coming to her brother’s rescue. “Well, I call it a party. We would—all be glad if you would join us.” She smoothed a hand through her hair, parting it in channels with her fingers. “Only, of course, if your evening is free.”

Before Eli could say anything (and really, what would he have said?), Aunt Molly blithely agreed.

Darcy smiled, then.

Eli wondered how, once he had seen it, he could ever have forgotten it.

_ii._

The afternoon died a slow death. Darcy went for a walk on the beach with Bing, and knew she seemed silent and sullen. She wasn’t sullen, really. She was just thinking. But what was _Bing _thinking?

Bing looked wise, which worried Darcy more than anything.

Bing linked her arm through Darcy’s.

Bing said, “I think you should wear that white dress.”

“What white dress?” Darcy asked, disentangling her arm and putting on her best bemused face. “I don’t own a white dress.”

Bing laughed at the ocean and it seemed as if the ocean laughed back. “Oh, Darcy. Like you forget _anything_. The one I got you to buy at that vintage shop in Soho? Last summer?”

“Right,” Darcy said.

“You’ve never worn it, have you?”

“It’s _white_.” Darcy waved her hands. “The last time I wore a white dress was to my First Communion. Seriously, Bing. What is your agenda, here?”

“My agenda,” said Bing, kicking thoughtfully at the sand, “Is to follow someone’s dream.”

_Even if I can’t follow my own,_ was unsaid, and yet it colored Darcy’s apprehension with guilt. But Bing wasn’t trying to make her feel guilty; that was the wonder of Bing.

“I don’t have dreams,” Darcy lied. Bing grabbed her hand and tugged her to the edge of the water.

“Let’s go in!”

“It’ll be freezing,” Darcy pointed out. “I mean, if you want water that much, there’s always the pool. The _heated_ pool.”

“A pool behind your mansion, when you have the _ocean_?” Bing demanded, kicking off her shoes. “Live a little, Darcy! I know you’ve got some dreams in there, deep down.”

Darcy kicked off her shoes, a little grudgingly, and waded in after her. Sure enough, it was freezing. The hems of her jeans got wet.

“Is it—” Bing asked, pushing her halo of curls back, “Is it...it’s Eli, right? It has to be Eli. I think I’ve known longer than you have.”

Darcy reached down, and splashed Bing from head to toe.

Bing screamed in outrage, but she was laughing, and Darcy just lifted an eyebrow and took the return splash with relative calm.

“Shut up,” she said, no sting to it. She was stupid, wasn’t she? What right had she to live again and again? “I’ll wear the white dress if it will really make you so happy.”

The question of course, that evening, was whether it would make _Eli_ happy. Cal and Harry took George into town with them before dinner, to see the sights, or whatever. They were tourists still and always, and it would have amused Darcy under other circumstances. Darcy and Bing stayed behind.

“I don’t think Cal is expecting our party to include Bennets,” Bing said, with a giggle, as she slipped tiny, gilded butterflies into her ears. “I just wish—”

She didn’t finish her sentence, and Darcy bit the inside of her cheek.

The white dress was hanging in her closet. She had left it here because it was summer dress. Bing zipped up the back and Darcy smoothed the skirt. “I forgot it was a halter top,” she said.

“You look amazing,” Bing said. “Very _Seven Year Itch_. Can you wear red lipstick, please?”

“No.”

“Can I curl your hair?”

Darcy ruminated on this. “A little.”

Mistakes were being made by the dozen. Most of them resided in her head and heart.

The doorbell rang at a quarter past six. Darcy knew that Jo would answer it. She got there first anyway.

Eli, in a checked button-down and jeans, was holding a bouquet of flowers.

Darcy reminded herself to breathe, first as a concept, second as a necessity. “Hello,” she said. “Thank you so much for coming.”

Her eyes were on the flowers. He swallowed, and held them out—shirt-sleeves rolled to the elbow—and said, “These are...for the house.”

“The house,” Darcy managed, “Will look great. With them.”

“Eli!” Bing sang, catapulting her way down the stairs. All her shyness was gone. Eli’s grudge was not against her.

Bing hugged him, as though they hadn’t met just a few hours before.

Darcy ached.

“Come inside!” Bing was tugging at his hand. “Doesn’t Darcy look gorgeous? Isn’t the house a dream? I love it here.” She made small-talk, effortless and effervescent, with Eli’s aunt and uncle. It was Darcy’s house, but Darcy could only feel blindly grateful. She clutched Eli’s bouquet, prayed it hadn’t cost him too much—florists were murderous on Block Island—and cursed herself for not having learned more about floral preservation.

“I thought you were having a party,” Eli said. “Is it—is it just us?”

“It’s still early,” Darcy said, intentionally vague. She didn’t want to admit that Eli was the party. “I should put these in some water.”

Eli stood still in hall. Bing had taken Molly and Will away.

“You can come,” Darcy said. She had been wise not to wear lipstick; she kept worrying her lip with her teeth and that would have made a ghoulish mess. “If you want.”

“Yeah, of course,” Eli said.

She couldn’t tell if he was shy—unlikely—or if he hated her—possible, but confusing—or if something else entirely was going on.

Darcy, more aware of her white dress than ever, led the way to the kitchen.

“Do you cook?” Eli asked. Then he seemed to laugh half to himself, and added, “Stupid question. You have a cook.”

“I’m terrible,” Darcy admitted. “George tries, from time to time.”

She opened a cupboard to reach for a vase. It was too high. She gritted her teeth.

“I’ll get it,” Eli said. He moved in, too quickly for her to move away, and reached around her. She felt her bare shoulder-blade graze his chest, and she shivered.

Eli turned the vase in his hand for a second before handing it to her. In his eyes, the old amusement seemed to gleam again. She hoped that the colder derision was forever gone.

“Is this why you always wear heels?” he asked. “Because you’re...kind of short.”

Darcy fixed him with her most powerful stare. “I’m a very respectable height,” she said. “And I don’t wear heels to make me taller.” Which was half a lie. “I wear them because they double as a _very_ effective weapon. I trust you know the origin of the word _stiletto_?”

“I do,” Eli said, with a cat’s grin.

Wherever this particular conversation was going, it ended with the arrival of the Lees and George. Cal crashed into the kitchen with a bottle of champagne in each hand, stopping short when he saw Eli. His face darkened.

“Cal,” Darcy said, with a warning layered in her tone, “You remember Eli. He and his aunt and uncle are joining us for dinner.”

“Don’t pop the celebratory corks just yet,” Eli said, dry as champagne itself.

Cal visibly ground his teeth. “Drink it all in while it lasts,” he said, and walked out.

“Don’t mind him,” said Darcy.

“Shame you don’t have an original stiletto,” Eli returned, with laughter in his eyes, and just like that, it was comfortable again, comfortable as it had never been before. This couldn’t be a _return_, Darcy knew. There was nothing to return to.

What about the future?

_Damn it, stop getting ahead of yourself._

“I should call everyone in for dinner.” She didn’t want to. She wanted to stay here, in a moment that shouldn’t be allowed to exist.

Dinner, of course, was awkward—at least for Darcy. She had hardly expected it to be otherwise. The Gardiners were lovely, and so was Bing, but Harry and Nina were aloof and Cal was embittered. At least George was talking to Eli. Darcy tried to pretend she wasn’t watching, but she was.

It was all there. All the reasons why she fell in love. She had only ever seen his warmth and light shared with other people, but such scraps had been enough. Now he was opposite George on the sofa, drinking after-dinner coffee, chin propped on his hand. He listened attentively to whatever he had (remarkably) convinced George to say. She wished Fitz could see this; George, animated and almost lively, with someone other than the two of them. Someone other than his music teachers.

Oh, yes, Darcy had been right about Eli. It was she who had been all wrong for him.

Some moments later, Harry and Nina and the Gardiners were still having a standoffish tête-a-tête (at no fault of the Gardiners), and Cal had disappeared in pursuit of another beer. Bing and George were dueting at the piano, with Eli standing beside them.

Darcy curved her hand around the fading heat of her coffee cup. Somewhere in her mind, Gemma said, _You’re the one who always gets to be happy_, and Darcy shot back, as she had at thirteen—during their first real fight—_is this what you call being happy?_

Fools. Sometimes, with the unforgiving clarity of years, she could admit that both she and Gemma had been fools

The French doors at the back of the house opened out onto steps that led down to the pool, framed by a low brick wall enclosing a narrow walkway. Darcy slipped away to those doors; Darcy slipped through them. Once outside, she would have leaned against the wall, but for her troublesome white dress.

_You can’t love him again._ In the dusk, in the breeze, she huffed a quiet laugh, and asked a mocking question of herself.

_Again? I never stopped._

The island was beautiful at night. Dotted with a thousand lights, it was as though the sky had been turned upside down, and all the stars were here.

Far off, she heard the sounds of other people; ever nearer, she heard the water. There were trees at Pemberley. The sea breeze tangled the branches in a restful waltz.

All things considered, a better night than she deserved. Darcy pressed her hand against her lips.

“Hey—you. Darcy.” It was slurred. She turned, startled, and saw Cal, the neck of a beer clenched loosely between his fingers.

He was drunk.

“What?” Darcy snapped, because this might be a very small party, but it was still something at her home, for her people, and Cal wasn’t really _her_ people. He never had been.

Why had he thought it appropriate to—

He edged closer. Staggered, really. Darcy glowered at him.

“What’s the matter with you?” he asked, voice low and uneven. “You keep—shutting yourself off. From me. I just—I wanna get to know you better. You know I’ve wanted that for a long time.”

“Yes.” Darcy ran her hand along the lip of the brick wall. “I know.”

“Kiss me,” Cal said suddenly, dropping the bottle with a crash and lurching forward. “Kiss me.” He reached for her, hands cupping her face, hot and hard. Darcy elbowed him in the stomach.

“Don’t touch me,” she hissed. Still, she kept her voice down. There was no need to cause a scene. No one would hear her from the living room, anyway, unless she really screamed.

She hoped she didn’t have to scream.

Cal stumbled backwards—rather dangerously close to the edge of the pool. His face was flushed, and angry, now.

“Is this about Eli?” he asked. Whined, really. At the root of it all, Cal was a whiner. “Is that what this is? What would your parents say, if they knew you and that piece of shit were—”

Darcy barely heard the footsteps behind her. The next thing she knew—or saw—Eli’s fist crashed into Cal’s mouth, and Cal hurtled unceremoniously backwards into the pool with a tremendous splash.

Several things sprang to Darcy’s mind at once. First, satisfaction; but that was quickly replaced by dread. Oh, God—had Eli_ heard_? Probably, or he wouldn’t have punched him. Had Eli seen Cal touch her? Had—

She realized, then—she and Eli both must have realized—that Cal was floundering and sinking, too drunk to get his bearing in the water.

Darcy heard Eli swear, low, but apparently neither of them thought it necessary to communicate further, before they both kicked off their shoes and leapt in.

Eli reached Cal first. He dragged him to the shallow end, and hefted him over the side. Cal lay on his stomach, hacking up water for a moment, and then, with nary a word of thanks and a great many mumbled curses, he launched a squelching path around the edge of the house.

Gone. He was gone.

And that left Darcy and Eli in the pool.

Darcy swam to the shallow end, so that her feet could touch the ground.

Eli was staring at her, lips parted. He pushed his wet hair off his forehead. Then he said, “Um, you’re...having a bit of a Marilyn Monroe moment.”

Darcy looked down. Sure enough, her dress was floating around her, bobbing like a cloud. She pushed it down and held it there against her thighs with her hands.

“You know,” Eli said, with a smile working at the corners of his mouth, “We didn’t _both_ need to jump in.”

“True,” said Darcy. “He didn’t deserve a double rescue.”

“I knew he was an idiot,” Eli said, with a brief glance heavenward. “I _did_ think he could swim.”

“He can,” Darcy informed him. “Just not when he’s…_punchy_.”

It was a terribly stupid joke, but Eli burst into laughter. And for the first time, for the first time in memory, he was laughing _with _her. Darcy let herself laugh, and then they were crumpled over, still waist-deep in the water, laughing, for what felt like a long time and not enough time at all.

Finally, Darcy recovered herself. She smoothed back her hair from her face. It was a horrid tangle; all Bing’s careful ministrations ruined. “Damn it,” she said. “I lost an earring.”

“No,” Eli said, wading towards her. He raised a hand but stopped before he reached her cheek. “It’s, uh—it’s right here. It’s in your hair. May I?”

“Yes.” She tilted her head, and his fingers caught in her hair for a moment. She felt his thumb graze her cheek.

“Got it,” Eli said, flashing a grin. “Here you go. I bet these are expensive.”

“My mom’s. They were…my mom’s.”

“Ah.” He looked down. “I...” And then up again, and yes, _yes_, she had never stopped loving him. “Are you alright? He didn’t—”

“Nothing happened,” Darcy said. “He’ll slink around for a while. I’ve never trusted him, so there’s no danger.”

It was never that simple.

“I’ll kill him,” Eli said abruptly. Then he shrugged, as though it were a casual matter. “Just, you know, because he’s a dick. It’s a matter of principle.”

“You don’t have to kill anyone,” Darcy informed him. She folded her arms over her chest, just in case—sure, Eli was being a gentleman, eyes up and everything, but this was another reason never to wear white dresses. “I’m my own assassin.”

“I bet you are,” Eli said. He flexed his hand and winced a little.

“You’re bleeding!” Almost without thinking, Darcy reached for his hand, modesty abandoned. He didn’t pull back. She resisted the impish urge to lace her fingers through his and instead turned it from side to side, examining the raw red splits along his knuckles.

“It’s fine,” he assured her. His voice was almost—soft. When had Eli ever been so soft with her? “He has a thick skull.”

“Still,” Darcy said. “Let me—”

The French doors opened. Darcy dropped his hand. Will Gardiner stood on the steps, with his phone in hand. Whatever he thought of his nephew’s current situation, he didn’t comment. He just said, in a strained tone, “Eli, there’s been—it’s your mom.”

Eli went ramrod stiff. “What? What happened?”

Darcy felt the wind turn winter-cold.

“Overdose,” Will said quietly. “She’s in and out of consciousness. We—we need to go.”


	29. hatred had vanished long ago

_“It was gratitude; gratitude, not merely for having once loved, but for loving still well enough _ _to forgive all the petulance and acrimony of the manner of rejection, and all the unjust _ _accusations accompanying it.”_

_i._

Through the open door, Mom didn’t look like herself. Eli had a glimpse of death, then, to turn the news inescapably true—but when he stepped inside, she opened her eyes.

“They said you were coming,” she said. Faint, fluttering in both eyes and voice.

“She’s been almost unresponsive,” the nurse said, amazed. “Mrs. Bennet, I didn’t know you heard—” 

Mom said, “He’s the only one I want to see.” She managed a gray smile for Eli. “I’ve been faking for a while now. Didn’t want to deal with your father.”

Eli’s knees went out from under him. Falling apart, elbows on the dense hospital mattress, like he was praying at her side.

“Damn it, Mom,” he whispered. “This isn’t funny.”

She tugged out her thin cannula tube and tossed it aside. “You need that,” the nurse scolded, trying to replace it.

“I’ll be fine,” Mom said, witheringly. “It’s just family shit. Haven’t you ever—”

“Better leave it,” Eli told the nurse, as politely as he could. He had to look up at her, child-height. “Could you…give us a few minutes?”

The nurse left. Eli sat back on his heels and took Mom’s hand in his. “Was it all an act?”

Mom sighed before answering. “It was an accident,” she said at last. “You won’t believe me. Worrywart.”

He said nothing.

“You get so used to them, you know? They wear off. They don’t work. I needed _more_. That’s all.”

“You took enough to kill you.” The words hurt, coming out. “Mom, I...I thought you were going to—” The only word he was certain of was the one he couldn’t quite say.

“Die?” She reached for his hand and moved it to her legs, letting him feel that stillness. “Don’t you remember? I already did.”

_Goddamn it. Goddamn it. _His mind played that in a loop, played worse things in a loop. Images. And he couldn’t chase them away, couldn’t tell her anything. Not about last night, a blur of generosity and fear. Not that Darcy—Darcy!—had pulled some strings and managed to get Eli and the Gardiners on a private flight to mainland Rhode Island. They’d driven west in the ghost hours of the morning—it was just past six, now.

He turned his hand so that it wrapped around hers.“You can’t do this again.”

Her dark eyes held stubbornly steady, even while the rest of her seemed ready to slip away. “Your father’s so loud. They’re all so loud.”

He hated her, sometimes. The way she could be _gone_, just like Dad could, when they were right in front of you. Didn’t matter if Mom’s reasons were deeper, or darker, or closer to permanent.

He loved her.

Eli lowered his head and pressed his face against the side of the bed, so that the blanket would catch any tears that escaped. Mom stroked his hair, until he just hated himself.

_You should have been here. You can’t leave her—you know that._

But how and when was he supposed to ever know? She’d survived the months he’d been gone in Manhattan. Then, this time, two days had been enough for it all to go hell.

“I’m not suicidal,” Mom said. “I’d have offed myself long ago if that was it. Like I said, I wanted some quiet. We had a fight. I used to get out—used to walk down the road halfway to Meryton. Used to go to work and clean up other people’s shit rather than deal with his.” She sighed. “Needed to let it all go.”

“_Mom_.”

“I know, honey. I’m sorry.” She had another smile for him, then, but he didn’t want her to smile right now. “But I’m only sorry to you.”

Four other sons. She had four other sons. Eli twisted the blanket under his fingers and got to his feet. It felt like he couldn’t do anything but swallow air; it wasn’t reaching his lungs.

“I’ll call the nurse back in,” he said. It was hard to control his voice. Hard to do anything. “I need to talk to James.”

James and Mark and Cody were on the bench outside.

“Dad went home,” Cody said, dolefully.

“Don’t talk to me about Dad,” Eli snapped. “James, a word?”

James looked awful. Two days, and he looked like he hadn’t slept in a week. The first thing he said was, “Darcy, huh?”

Right, the text. Eli should have known something was up when James didn’t text back. “That’s what you want to talk about?” Eli demanded, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans. He was aching with exhaustion, but adrenaline and caffeine were still giving him enough to run on.

James shrugged wearily. “Better than the alternative.”

“We need to talk about the alternative. What the hell happened?”

“Mom and Dad got in a fight about Levi.”

“Mom gave a shit about Levi?” Eli scoffed. “That’s new.”

James stared past Eli’s shoulder, into fluorescent distance, into a blur of ugly green and white tile. The hall looked like a headache; bright lights and sterile stabs of pain. “Levi said he was going to drop out of school. Dad said fine. Mom flipped.”

Eli clenched his fist so hard that it stung from the memory of Cal’s teeth. “I’m going to kill him.”

“Dad or Levi?”

“Both of them. What is Levi thinking? He’s got like, three weeks left.” Eli dragged his hands over his face. “Goddamn it.”

“I have no idea,” James said. “He’s been weird lately. Anyway, it was a bad fight, and...Mom just shut down afterwards. Then I found her on the bathroom floor. She fell forward. Out of her chair.”

“I never should have left,” Eli said thickly.

James shoved him. “She shouldn’t have taken the pills,” he said, with surprising firmness.

Eli smiled humorlessly. “Huh. OK. So _now_ you’re willing to criticize another human being?”

“I’m not willing to let you take the fall just because it’s Mom.” James was dead serious. “Look, do you want to stay here? The doctor said, now that she’s awake, they’ll keep her today for monitoring. But—Mark and Cody should go home.”

“They’ve been here all night?” Eli asked, mildly impressed.

“Yeah.”

“Where’s the little shit?”

“Levi?” James gestured. “I think he’s getting coffee.”

“Stay here for ten minutes,” Eli said. “I’m going to talk to him.”

James looked almost stern. “Don’t be too hard on him. He’s just a kid.”

“At least he gets to be one,” Eli shot back, and stalked off.

_She’s still alive_, Darcy had said, at the airport. She had been very pale, her hair still a wet tangle on her shoulders. _She’s still alive_. She said it like it was the only thing that mattered.

Darcy, he supposed, would know.

He found Levi at the vending machine. Levi knew he was going to die, apparently, because he winced as soon as he saw Eli.

“Two seconds, before I kick your ass,” said Eli, leaning over him. “Explain.”

“I didn’t mean for this to happen,” Levi stuttered. “I just—it’s not worth it. I told you, I hate school and—”

Eli grabbed him by the collar and growled, “She could have _died_, you idiot.”

Levi’s eyes filled with tears.

Eli sighed. James was right. Damn it; James was always right.

“Come here, you snot-nosed little shit,” Eli said, pulling him into a rough hug, and he meant it literally, because Levi started snuffling against his shoulder while Eli rolled his eyes.

“I hate school,” Levi said again, through a mouthful of Eli’s shirt.

“Then suck it up for two more weeks, dickhead. That’s all she wants.” Eli stepped back and jabbed his brother in the chest. “_All_. _She_. _Wants_. Take your finals, get your shitty grades—no one’s expecting a star performance—and then—”

“Exactly,” Levi said bitterly, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “And then—what? You all are still at home. We finish high school and sit around like Dad or work our asses off at c-crappy jobs, and I don’t want to do it. I just don’t. I want something better.”

Eli wanted a lot of things; most of them were far away. “Of course you do. So go get it after high-school. Do whatever the hell you want after you do this one thing. Got it?”

Levi nodded, staring at the ground. “You won’t be mad? If I do anything I want?”

“No,” Eli said, all the heat draining out of him like a snuffed match. “Jesus Christ. You can do whatever you want.”

He sent Levi home with James and sat with Mom as the sunshine brightened through the windows. At half-past nine, his phone rang. An unknown number.

He picked up.

“Eli?”

It was Darcy’s voice. He’d know it anywhere. “Yeah—uh. Yes. It’s me.”

A beat of silence. “I’m so sorry to bother you,” she said. “I got your number from Fitz.”

“Oh.” His pulse was up and his eyes were stinging and he wished he could be anywhere else.

“Is your mom OK?”

“She’ll pull through,” Eli said, glancing down. Mom smiled at him. He tried for a smile back. He heard Darcy let out a breath. “I’m glad,” she said. “I’m—I’m really glad. I won’t call again, I know it was rude to get your number. Goodbye.”

And that, all in a rush, before he could tell her that he didn’t actually mind at all.

“Who was that?” Mom asked.

“A friend,” Eli said, and was surprised by how desolate he felt; how incomplete the word seemed.

_ii._

_Booze_, Gemma said, _Heals all wounds._

Darcy drank. She wasn’t tired of crying, yet. It kept coming, out of her eyes and nose and mouth. She could only pinch her lips around the bottle for a few seconds, before they spasmed outwards again in the kind of keening grimace that stretched skin taut, stretched moments out forever.

Gemma drank too. Gemma cried too. Talked more than Darcy did, _Cynthia, Cynthia, Cynthia_, mourning Darcy’s mom in flaming color, no words for her dad, no words for what it meant to lose them both together.

_Stop_, Darcy begged. _Stop._

_You’re still a baby_, Gemma said, wiping Darcy’s tears away with her thumbs. _It’s not fair. _

Someday, Fitz was going to take George to visit Korea.

Darcy did not resent this plan; how it was separate from her. She, who had been to Bulgaria and Japan and Bhutan and Norway, had no desire to see a country she only _might_ have known.

If they went, perhaps George would travel to Incheon, find the Go family house—written 高 in Hangul, Darcy knew that much—and come face to face with their mother’s parents. George, with their mother’s soft eyes and delicate chin, might reclaim that past.

Darcy believed them to be still alive, which was unfair, because Mom had been dead to them long before she was dead to anyone else.

That was the story Darcy chose to believe. She didn’t want to return, nearly a decade since total loss, and find remnants of a misunderstanding. Her mother had always said that they turned their backs on her when she chose love over other futures, and that was enough for Darcy.

The truth, probably, was somewhere in between. Mom never spoke about her parents unless she had to; she spoke Korean sparingly, even when English was an uphill battle. Mom made _kimchijigae_, Mom talked about Seoul and Muui-dong Island, talked about ghost crabs scuttling along the shore. She kept one as a pet.

Where did that leave her children?

Where did mothers leave their children?

_She’ll pull through._

This side of loss, Darcy set her phone down and buried her face in her hands. Eli had his parents still, such as they were. Darcy had never met his mother, only sensed some vague discomfort about her from Bing. But Mrs. Bennet was alive, and that made her ten times worthier, ten times better, than anyone in a grave.

The world was in a strange tangle. It was day, but Darcy was exhausted from lack of sleep. Harry and Nina and especially Cal, nursing a black eye he would explain to no one, had left. Bing had stayed. If it had been any other day after, Darcy would have told her, as delicately as possible, that Cal needed to keep his distance for a while. But there had been more pressing matters at hand.

Darcy heard a tap at her bedroom door. Darcy lifted herself out of an ungraceful sprawl, tucking her phone in her pocket and trying to memorize the sound of Eli’s voice, as though that was important.

(It always, always was.)

Bing was at the door, two steaming mugs in her hands. “George made tea,” she said, by way of explanation.

George’s whereabouts, currently, were determined by the gentle strains of a _rondo_ floating in the air. Darcy took the tea, and she and Bing sat cross-legged on the bed.

Bing said, “You know, I almost texted James.”

“You should,” Darcy said. She was tired of pretext and concealments and making judgments for the betterment of others, when it only ended in hurt and confusion. “I don’t know what I—”

Bing held up a hand, interrupting her. “It’s really OK,” she said. “When the news came about their mom, I realized—James doesn’t need any other pressures in his life. I really liked him, and it was fun—but it was fun for me because I don’t have their life. They—I can’t be selfish. Not with someone like him.”

Darcy froze. _Selfish_. Was it selfish of her to love Eli, still, the way she did?

“I just mean,” she said carefully, “You should do what you think is best.”

“It gets quieter,” Bing said, with a brave smile. “Even if it doesn’t get easier.”

“Their mom is going to be OK,” Darcy said, staring at the bedspread. Down the hall, George had switched to a more melodramatic piece.

“You called him?” Bing asked. Her voice was very soft. “Oh, _Darcy_!”

Darcy still couldn’t meet Bing’s eyes. “I won’t call him again.”

“I know it’s a terrible time to say it, but...I _really_ think there’s something there,” Bing said.

Darcy looked up at last, blankly and openly. Pain did that sometimes; laid you bare. “How can there be something between me and Eli if there isn’t anything between you and James?”

“I just meant—James needs space. He can’t say it out loud, so I have to be the one to give. If he even still likes me.” Bing brushed away a sigh. “But Eli needs you. And you need him. It’s plain as can be, girl. If you could only see how you two _look_ at each other when you’re sure the other one isn’t looking! OMG. It’s sublime. Like you just want to shove each other up against a wall and kiss in the pouring rain.”

“Why,” Darcy asked flatly, “would there be a wall and pouring rain?” It was dangerously close to Manhattan and the Rose Gala, if only Bing _knew_.

Bing shrugged. “I don’t know. You run out of a party, and he runs after you, and it starts raining—and your dress is getting ruined and you don’t care—”

“No,” Darcy whispered, more to herself than Bing. “It doesn’t happen like that.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” Darcy picked a scrap of lint off the knee of her jeans. “Well, inappropriately timed romantic fantasies aside, Bing…why won’t you text James, really?”

“Remember? The whole...we sort of lost contact in a really final way. I’m not going to throw myself back into his life when he doesn’t want me, especially when they’re going through a lot of stuff.” Bing was all earnest honesty, and it stabbed at Darcy.

She wanted to pour it all out there, tell the truth, tell of her own unclean hands. But another part of her mind whispered, _Bing’s right, they’re a mess_._ Don’t push her back into it_.

Even Eli couldn’t be thinking of wanting James’ happiness now. Not if meant going back. Doubtless, he didn’t want any of them again—Darcy, least of all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ghost crabs in (and more about) Incheon, Korea: https://thedissolve.kr/i-was-born-and-raised-in-incheon/


	30. talking of all except what had particularly interested

_“That was only when I first saw her, for it is many months since I have considered her as one_

_of the handsomest women of my acquaintance.”_

_i._

The truck needed painting. James and Eli had redone its original red after Dad’s last fender-bender, but red was rapidly becoming rust.

“What do you think of blue?” Eli asked James, and James shrugged.

“Seems like a good time for a change.”

One trouble with life was that it never happened all at once. Eli had come home to deal with a crisis, but his own heart wouldn’t be quieted by the din of panic. He couldn’t put Darcy out of his mind. In melancholy parallel, James hadn’t proved equal to the task of forgetting Bing.

So they painted the truck and soldiered on, as the crisis faded and left disappointment in its wake.

Dad and the younger boys quickly tired of their best behavior. Mom took longer naps than usual and started in on another stack of books. Eli watched her like a hawk, which felt both like childhood and the future. The fear of losing her was constant; the sharpest, oldest pain he knew.

All this, and it was June again.

June. The same golden dust and sunburnt timothy grass sweetened the air, the same birds sang in it. The whir of a Bentley’s engine seemed possible, close.

“You saw her?” James asked one day, handing Eli a fresh brush.

“Yes,” Eli said. For a second, he thought James was talking about Darcy, but no, that was just his own preoccupation. “She seemed well.” He almost said, _I think she still cares for you, I think she always did, I think as much as I ever did that Cal is full of shit_—but he found he didn’t have it in him to build James’ hopes anew.

Disappointment was a comfortable enough companion to Eli, but James didn’t deserve to suffer anymore.

James was avoiding his gaze, anyway, busying himself with stirring paint and touching up Eli’s mistakes. James the mechanic, letting Eli take the lead on a task he was unequal too, because James knew Eli needed something to do.

Even now, Eli had to admit that the subtleties of James, of both their lives, were such as could never be understood by the women they might have loved. They were far away from any island paradise, but Eli remembered Pemberley.

Bennets didn’t even belong at Netherfield.

_Yes_, Eli told himself. James couldn’t handle any more hopes. And neither could he.

Without the promise of Netherfield occupants this summer, Meryton’s interests returned to their usual ground: the ballet. Eli did not enjoy the prospect of seeing Gemma, but November’s encounter had dulled the edge of any possible meeting.

Let her renew old allies and gain new ones, as was her wont. He would have no part in it.

Of course, his brothers missed that particular memo.

“You gonna make another pass at Gemma?” Levi asked one evening, looking up from where he was seemingly trying to roll a cigarette out of Dad’s stolen tobacco.

Levi’s graduation was Saturday. Eli had been playing helicopter-parent as needed, just like he played helicopter-everything-else. At the moment, he was balancing the family checkbook.

It wasn’t balancing very well. This was why he usually left this kind of thing to James.

“No,” he said, scratching out an error in the debit column.

“Why not?”

“Blondes don’t have more fun, after all,” Eli returned glibly. He wasn’t going to get into the details with Levi, of all people.

“Don’t quit it till you hit it,” Levi sing-songed, and Eli punched his arm.

“Hey. Mom’s in the other room.”

“And she can hear you,” said Mom, from the other room, and she sounded so much like her old self that Eli found himself suddenly sharing a smile with Levi.

“See, she’s fine!” Levi whispered.

“Yeah, genius. Don’t screw it up.”

Levi rolled his eyes and went back to the tobacco.

Eli clung to the moment—to its almost-sweetness—during the evening portion of his duties, trying to preserve some kind of happiness. It was hard, staring into a half-drunk beer.

Monitoring Dad’s barfly habits was the worst of the Bennet legacies, but since the Memorial Day fiasco, James and Eli had bitten a number of bullets. Mom couldn’t afford another crisis. That meant Dad couldn’t _cause_ another crisis, which meant he would either have to stop getting drunk (never going to happen) or have someone there to keep him from going overboard.

And so Eli was meditating on a beer, and specifically _not _thinking about scotch that tasted like floor polish.

Even in a dingy bar that smelled like grime and fryer oil, all roads led to Darcy.

She’d be coming home from work, now, unless her hours ran long. Darcy didn’t do anything by halves. He could well imagine her poring over files, dark brows drawn straight and serious; or holding forth in court, shoulders back, chin forward, eyes and lips daring the world to wrest victory from her.

He told himself to stop romanticizing. He wasn’t actually sure, after all, if Darcy had ever even been in a courtroom. The point was not what she was doing, since he didn’t know, but _he _was doing. He was thinking of her, on and on through nights and mornings. _Was_ it hope, despite what he’d sworn to deny himself and James?

If she showed up on his doorstep now, to tell him that she loved him—

There was Darcy, opening her heart in a Manhattan alley. There was Darcy, doubled over with laughter, drenched and all in white. There was Darcy, cold and aloof. There was Darcy, wanting him to meet her brother.

And there was so much more than that.

“Eli.”

He stiffened. He’d know that voice anywhere, not because of love.

Gemma’s hair was twisted up away from her swan-like neck, and her eyes and shoulders glinted under the yellow light.

Eli took a swig of beer, a desperate call for fortitude. He shot her a cursory smile, making a study of nonchalance. “Hey.”

She slipped into the seat next to him, turning so that her knee brushed against his thigh. “No offense, but you look wasted.”

“On my first beer, thanks.” He flicked his eyes to Dad, almost against his will. Dad was deep in conversation with one of his buddies. Voice at a reasonable volume.

“No, not like that…I mean you like tired. It’s been what, six months? Seven? You’re aging too fast. It’s a loss to humanity.”

He rolled his eyes. “Ballet not keeping you busy, yet?” he asked, aiming the conversation away from himself.

“Not here for that, actually.”

That surprised him. Surprised by her for the second time this evening. “Really?”

“I came up to hang with Denny, follow a few leads of my own. But yeah, I’m out of the company.” She shrugged. “I mean, what can I say? I’m getting old.”

He said nothing. She ordered a drink.

“I’m sorry to see you here,” she said, when the bartender moved away.

“Why?”

“I hoped the new year might have brought you new dreams.”

“I’ve got a lot on my plate at the moment,” said Eli, toying with his glass.

Her hand was on his arm, fingers curving around his wrist, stroking the pulse point. It took her less than two seconds to perfect the gesture. “I was only teasing you, you know. You look tired, but I don’t think you’ve changed. Not where it counts.”

He shook her hand free. He was getting pissed. That was dangerous; James would tell him it was dangerous. Maybe Darcy would, too. But the thought of Darcy charged him; convicted him.

“You don’t know me,” he said. 

“Maybe not,” she answered. Her drink came, she tipped it back. Licked her lips afterwards. “Not since you’ve known Darcy.”

He thought they’d covered this ground, last November.

“Still playing that card?”

She ignored the question. “Come outside with me,” she said. “Your dad won’t drown without you, for five minutes.”

He stayed where he was.

“I’ve got something to tell you. Come on, Eli. Don’t be a dick. Don’t make me say it here.”

She raised her a voice a little on those last words. Enough to turn a few heads.

Eli didn’t want to go with her, but he also didn’t want to have this conversation in anyone else’s hearing.

They went out the side door. Eli leaned against the wall. Apathy, apathy. The emotion he couldn’t quite capture, perhaps because it didn’t exist. “Well?”

Gemma’s brash veneer almost vanished. Her voice shook. “I’m...I’m in trouble,” she said. “I—I needed to get you alone, because you’re the only one…” She seemed lost for words. He was almost surprised by how convincing it was. “Shit,” she said at last, with a laugh. “This is sad, right? The ballet was supposed to be an out for me. Now I’ve lost that, too. I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

He felt sick. Their whole conversation hadn’t had a shred of real meaning, not in calm, not in fury. He was angry, and he didn’t trust her.

Eli said, “I’m not sure I can do much.”

Gemma moved closer to him. “I can see it in your eyes,” she said. “You think I’m a bitch, now.”

“I see things differently, is all.” He wasn’t going to insult her. That seemed like going too far. Maybe she wasn’t to be feared; she couldn’t hurt Eli, after all. She was, instead, to be pitied.

“I’m not just a bitch,” she said. “It’s not that simple. Don’t you agree? It’s never that simple.”

“I never said—”

“What am I supposed to do?”

“I don’t know.” He paused. Ventured, “What kind of trouble are you in?”

She buried her face in her hands. He thought she was crying, at first. Then he realized she was laughing.

He took a step back, chilled.

She peeked at him through her fingers. Then she dropped her hands. “Jesus,” she said. “_There_ he is, still caring. You’re not worn out. You’re still so soft, you have so much to give. I won’t forget it—I promise.”

“I’m going back inside,” he said. The wall behind him was built of bricks, but it was not the same. This was not Manhattan, and this was not a girl in love.

“I really am in deep shit,” she said cheerfully. “But you don’t have any money to give me, so I’m not going to beg for real. I won’t even be here long. You won’t have to pretend to ignore me all summer. I’m not that cruel.”

He turned. Put his hand on the door.

“If she wanted you,” said Gemma, “I mean, _really _wanted you, you’d be somewhere else already.”

“What?”

“Darcy. I’ve thought about it since November. I always have to think of her, you know. Shit, we’re practically joined at the trauma-brain. She wouldn’t have shown you a different side of her unless—well, you know. You’re so very charming, and she’s so very lost. But it came to nothing, didn’t it?”

Fiercely, suddenly, he wanted to defend Darcy. Protect her, even, which was somehow an entirely new feeling. But he’d done her enough wrong already. The best thing he could do now was keep quiet.

“You don’t need me,” Eli answered, carefully calm. “So let it go. Let it all go, Gemma.”

“Ah,” Gemma said, a hungry smile slicing wide. “So I’m right. Thanks for that.”

He went in. Shut the door behind him. Heard her laughter all the way home, under the night breeze and Dad’s slurred conversation.

Heard it in his sleep.

_ii._

“Who was on the phone?” Darcy demanded, setting down her purse.

“Nobody,” George said, tucking it in his pocket. “I mean…she’s just—she’s a harpist. We were talking.”

“_She_?” Darcy lifted an eyebrow. The eyebrow never failed to elicit further explanation.

“Mina. Mina Kim. She’s Korean. Kim Mi Na, actually, but she’s fine with an Americanization.” George was beaming.

“How did you find her?”

“She does subtitles for dramas. We started chatting in the comments section of _While You Were Sleeping_, and then, you know. Snapchat. The Juilliard connection was a total fluke.”

“Hmm.” Darcy flipped through her portfolio. She was still troubled over a clause in the contract she was drafting. “Suspicious. Do I need to investigate further?”

George was red to his hairline. He’d finally started pushing the bangs back. “No.”

“OK.” Darcy permitted herself a smile, and George relaxed. She hoped—she always hoped—that George knew she only ever worried for good reason. Unfortunately, worry rarely looked like love.

Darcy was relieved when he sat down beside her, and poked at a corner of the portfolio.

“I thought you said no work once you got home.”

“I know I say that, but...”

“It’s nine o’clock,” George said, aggrieved.

Darcy sighed. “Is it? I can’t even think about the clock anymore. Or the calendar. It’s been a year—

“And it’s been five minutes since you got home, so you should stop working.” George mumbled, and Darcy nudged him.

“Who let you get so pushy? And don’t say you learned from the best.”

“But I did!” George protested, his dimples showing. Darcy kicked off her house slippers and folded her legs up under her.

“I promise, I won’t be like this forever. I just have to get established, in my own right.” That was how it worked; that was how it had to work. She didn’t need to be a lawyer, just like her father hadn’t. But somehow, even if it killed her, she had to find out what normal looked like.

George drifted into silence. Maybe he was thinking of Mina Kim; maybe of something else.

“You OK?” Darcy asked.

“I know you said that Eli’s mom was going to be fine,” George said. “But have you...uh, have you heard anything since? From him?”

Introducing George to Eli Bennet had either been the best or worst decision of her life. George was careful (for his own, unspoken reasons) about mentioning Eli to Darcy, but Darcy knew that nearly every conversation he had with Fitz centered on the subject.

In short, Eli was George’s new hero.

Darcy couldn’t be mad at that, exactly. But she also couldn’t—would never have the chance—

“I haven’t spoken to him since,” she said, getting up. “George, I—”

“There’s something you’re not telling me,” George said, following her into the kitchen. Darcy resisted the urge to hide behind the refrigerator door under the pretense of getting a snack. “I mean, I know that you’re _you_. And so I just thought you didn’t always like to have questions asked, but I also thought you two—”

Darcy held up a hand. She’d rather state her case, she decided, than hear the end of that speculation. “Yes,” she said. “There is something that I wasn’t telling you.”

It didn’t feel safe, exactly, but it finally felt like something George should know.

“I told him I had feelings for him last summer,” Darcy said, quick and quiet, as though a whisper would keep it secret still. “And there are a lot of reasons why, George, but the short version is that he didn’t..._doesn’t_...feel the same.” She wondered if she would regret it at once. Not so much that George knew, but that he might resent Eli. And regardless of other disappointments, George and Eli must always be on good terms, if they were on any terms at all.

“That can’t be right,” George said, and he genuinely looked confused.

“What do you mean?” Darcy demanded. The electric kettle heated quickly; in a moment she would have tea to go with leftover vegan muffins.

Fitz was experimenting with alternative baking.

“I mean he definitely likes you.”

“No, he doesn’t.” Darcy scoffed, rummaging around for a teaspoon. “I can assure you on that count.”

“I know I’m not the lawyer of the family,” George conceded meekly, “But...” He paused, then his face lit up. “Fitz agrees with me! Two against one!”

“Two who haven’t discussed the matter with Eli, and one who has.” Darcy turned her back, stirring her tea, so that George couldn’t see her face. “I win.”

“He told me that you were the most interesting person he’d ever met,” George said, all in a rush. “He asked if I had a guidebook or something, to figure you out.”

Darcy realized that her mouth was open. She shut it again and fought for composure. “I’m sure he was just teasing you.”

“I don’t think so,” George said. When Darcy turned round, he had that thoughtful look on his face again. “I think...”

“I’m going to get changed before I eat,” Darcy announced abruptly. “Have some cake. I’ll leave you to your thinking.”

In the hallway, she slumped against the wall. Her phone was in her hand and his name was on the screen. She traced the pad of her thumb across it, swallowing down all the _want _that never left her.

She didn’t call.


End file.
